Dinu Lipatti
Dinu Lipatti (19 March 1917, Bucharest – 2 December 1950, Geneva) was a Romanian classical pianist whose career was cut short at the age of thirty-three by lymphogranulomatosis (Hodgkin's disease). Despite a brief career and a comparatively small recorded legacy, he is still regarded by many specialists as one of the finest pianists of the 20th century.
He was born into a musical family in Bucharest: his father was a violinist who had studied with Pablo de Sarasate and Carl Flesch, and his mother was a pianist. The famous violinist and composer George Enescu agreed to be his godfather. Lipatti studied at the Gheorghe Lazăr National College and, at the same time, took three years of piano and composition lessons with Mihail Jora. He later attended the Bucharest Conservatory, studying with Florica Musicescu, including privately.
In June 1930, at a Bucharest Opera concert featuring the conservatory’s best students, his performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto was met with an enthusiastic ovation. In 1932 he received prizes for his own compositions, including a piano sonatina and a sonatina for violin and piano, and won the grand prize for the symphonic suite “Gypsies”. In 1933, at an international piano competition in Vienna, he shared second place with Taras Mykysha, placing behind Boleslav Kon; Alfred Cortot resigned from the jury in protest.
Lipatti subsequently studied in Paris at the École Normale de Musique under Alfred Cortot and Nadia Boulanger; with Boulanger he recorded several Brahms waltzes. He also studied composition with Paul Dukas and conducting with Charles Munch. He gave his debut concert on 20 May 1935; Dukas had died three days earlier, and Lipatti opened the program with Bach’s chorale “Jesus bleibet meine Freude” in Myra Hess’s transcription.
With the onset of the Second World War, Lipatti continued to give concerts in territories occupied by the Nazis. In 1943 he was forced to flee Romania with his future wife, the pianist Madeleine Cantacuzène (née Dannhauser, 1908–1983), and settled in Geneva, where he became a professor of piano at the conservatory. Around this time the first signs of his illness appeared; after initial uncertainty, a diagnosis of lymphogranulomatosis was made in 1947.
After the war, his appearances became increasingly rare. His condition improved for a time through then-experimental cortisone injections and through collaboration with Walter Legge, who produced most of the pianist’s recordings. Lipatti gave his farewell concert (which was recorded) at the Besançon Festival on 16 September 1950. Despite severe illness and high fever, he played Bach’s Partita No. 1, Mozart’s A-minor sonata, two Schubert Impromptus, and nearly all of Chopin’s waltzes in his own sequence; too exhausted to play the final waltz (No. 2 in A-flat major), he replaced it with the same Bach chorale that had opened his professional career. Less than three months later he died.
Lipatti was buried in a small cemetery near Geneva; his widow was buried nearby thirty-two years later. His playing has been revered for an exceptional union of personal integrity and pianistic technique in the service of musical perfection. His interpretations of Chopin, Mozart, and Bach are especially celebrated, while his recordings also include works by Ravel, Enescu, Liszt (including the Piano Concerto No. 1), Schumann (including the Piano Concerto), and Grieg (including the Piano Concerto). His recording of Chopin’s waltzes remains popular.
Beethoven’s music was comparatively rare in his repertoire, though he performed Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto twice in Bucharest during the 1940–41 season and stated his willingness to record it for EMI in 1949. The power, beauty, and sincerity of Lipatti’s recordings continue to inspire pianists and music lovers worldwide; commentators have also noted as unusual his manner of warming up immediately before performances, with virtually no pauses, making it difficult to tell precisely when the main performance began.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the art history graph.