Dinu Lipatti, who died at age 33 from lymphoma, is still regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. These pieces are piano concerti from live performances. As you’ll read below, he left very few studio recordings. Most what the world knows about his playing comes from live recordings, discovered over the years. These particular concerti have been remastered, and they have done a good job with the material. I am usually not happy with remastering, but in this case the remastering really helped the sound. I am not going to write anything about the composers. These are also famous composers, and it is easy to find biographical information about them, should you care to do so.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto No.21 in C major, K.467
Ⅰ. Allegro maestoso (00:00)
II. Andante (15:16)
III. Allegro vivace ass (22:33)
Festival Orchester Luzern
Dirigent : Herbert Von Karajan
Live recording in 1950, at Luzern
Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849)
Piano Concerto No.1 In E Minor, Op. 11, B 53
I. Allegro Maestoso (28:49)
II. Romance: Larghetto (45:58)
III. Rondo: Vivace (55:50)
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Dirigent : Otto Ackermann
Recorded in 1950, at Zürich
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Concerto in A minor Op.54
I. Allegro affetuoso (1:05:12)
II. Intermezzo. Andantino grazioso (1:19:27)
III. Allegro vivace (1:24:49)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Dirigent : Herbert Von Karajan
Recorded in 1948, at London
Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907)
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16
I. Allegro molto moderato (1:34:42)
II. Adagio (1:47:19)
III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato (1:53:46)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Dirigent : Alceo Galliera
Recorded in 1947, at London
Piano : Dinu Lipatti
New Mastering in 2020 by AB for CMRR
Dinu Lipatti
Dinu Lipatti was born March 19, 1917 in Bucharest, Romania. He began studying piano with his mother at the age of four, and later became a pupil of Mihail Jora and Florica Musicescu of the Bucharest Conservatory. When he was 16, Lipatti entered the 1933 Vienna International Music Competition and tied for second place. Jury member Alfred Cortot was infuriated, and a year later Lipatti went to study with him at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, where his other teachers included Lefebure, Munch, Dukas, and Boulanger.
Returning to Rumania at the outbreak of World War II, Lipatti escaped to Switzerland with his fiancee Madeleine Cantacuzene in 1943, at which time the first signs of Hodgkin’s Disease appeared. He was the following year appointed professor at the Geneva Conservatory, a post he held for five years.
In 1946 he signed an exclusive contract with EMI, but made only a few hours’ worth of recordings before he died in 1950 at the age of 33. These recordings have remained in the catalogue ever since they were released and have been supplemented with a few live performances. More than 50 years after his death, Lipatti remains a best-selling artist, and the search for more recordings continues.
Dinu Lipatti is a unique figure in the pantheon of pianists. His international fame is due almost exclusively to the widespread distribution of recorded output. When Lipatti died of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the age of 33 in December 1950, he left behind little more than three and a half hours of recordings for EMI’s Columbia label. Since that time, those recordings have been published in the catalogue the world over and gradually supplemented by a handful of highly prized unpublished concert and broadcast performances. Six decades after Lipatti’s death, the search for more examples of his playing continues, and indeed more treasures are coming to light.