In
the footsteps of Dinu Lipatti
By Orlando Murrin
 |
| From a private album of Madeleine Lipatti. On the back, in her hand: "Où? Je ne sais plus mais nous étions heureux - - " Credit: Collection Mme Cathérine Nurock-Foëx |
A couple of years ago I found myself with some time on my hands, and decided I would devote it to researching a musician who has fascinated me all my life - the Romanian pianist Dinu Lipatti.
I
can remember the exact moment my interest was triggered, at the barbaric
boarding school in the West Country to which I was sent at the age of 13.
Sunday evenings were cheered up - as much as they could be - by club and
society meetings, held in the masters’ houses. A couple of times a term, the ‘Gramophone
Society’ would gather and listen to records, and in the gaps between symphonies
and string quartets, we would ask stupid questions. What is the hardest
piece of music in the world? (‘Islamey’, apparently - though it could just
have been the most virtuosic piece the music master had on vinyl.) Who’s the
best pianist ever? ‘Liszt. After him, a Romanian who died young, called
Dinu Lipatti.’
I
should explain at this point that unlike most contributors to this august blog,
I am not a professional music writer, critic or musicologist, and although I
used to supplement my meagre income as a magazine sub-editor by playing the
piano in restaurants, I am not even a professional musician. I love classical
music, however, as much as anyone, and over decades of listening, remain
convinced that - at least about Lipatti - I was told right.
Of
course, Lipatti’s death at the age of just 33 - the last seven years under the
curse of a terrible illness - means his legacy is pretty slender. When I first
collected his records, there were about three hours of music; more have come to
light over the years - including crackly bootlegs from concerts - and now there
are about six. The most extraordinary remains the Last Recital, a performance
of unearthly beauty recorded live in Besançon just three months before the
pianist’s death: unable to finish the programme, which he played with unearthly
beauty, his eyes set on the middle distance as if gazing into the hereafter, he
staggered off stage, only to return a few minutes later to play for the final
time his signature encore, ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’.
So
what makes his playing so special? For a start, his impeccable phrasing,
glowing sonority and absolute technical mastery. His dazzling range of tonal
colour and innate, unostentatious rubato. The ‘momentum’ he gives to his
performance, as he drives the listener through whatever musical structure he is
presenting. If there is a Wigmore Hall in the skies, I feel Bach, Schubert and
Chopin would choose Lipatti to perform their compositions, rather than Richter
or Horowitz. His delivery is immaculate, discreet and seamless, as if he is
clothing the music in the most expensive of Savile Row suits.
As
a performer, Lipatti had something else, which we have to imagine for
ourselves: charisma. There was something of the Valentino about this small,
intense young man, with his exotic, brooding good looks, and who played the
piano with ‘steel fingers in velvet gloves’. From the outset, audiences (and
critics) went wild for him, and his concert appearances (mainly restricted to
Switzerland, as illness took its inexorable hold) began to attract an almost
religious fanaticism.
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| A rare photo of Lipatti taken only days before his death, with a nurse. Credit: Collection Mme Cathérine Nurock-Foëx |
Another
area of fascination is his life story, which is so melodramatic it is
surprising it hasn’t been made into a film. Among the myriad elements are…
•
his privileged background, scion of a wealthy family
in the Golden Age of Romania
•
a ruthlessly ambitious mother, who dragged the family
off to Paris so her son could study with Cortot
•
the misfiring of his career, at the outbreak of the
Second World War, and ill-judged propaganda tours of Germany and the Axis
territories
•
his headlong love affair with a married beauty nine
years his senior (a princess, no less) and subsequent ‘elopement’ to Switzerland
•
their hand-to-mouth existence in Geneva, and
the onset of a terrible mystery illness (finally diagnosed as Hodgkin’s
Lymphoma)
•
the ruin and humiliation of Lipatti’s family back in
Romania, and his mother’s ill-fated attempt to visit him (caught smuggling
jewellery in her underwear and thrown into jail at the Romanian border)
•
his glorious remission in 1950 (thanks to cortisone,
flown from the USA at vast expense by well-wishers) and that testament to his
courage and spirit, the Last Recital (arguably the most famous concert of the
20th century)
•
his posthumous ‘stardom’ and phenomenal record sales,
which enriched his widow but could not prevent…
•
her descent into depression and drink, and eventual
death 33 years later, surrounded by ’millions’ of cats and enmired in the ‘Chopin
Concerto Scandal’, in which she had misidentified one of her late husband’s
recordings.
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| The plaque on the Lipattis' home street in Geneva. It was put up last year, funded through the generosity of Lipatti's doctor's daughter, who has set up a foundation in their joint names to finance medical research into leukaemia. |
Readers
will not be surprised that once I started probing into this colourful tale, I
could not stop. I found myself striking up surprising new friendships, way
beyond my normal sphere (some might say, out of my normal league…). With
warm-hearted pianist and Lipatti fan Alberto Portugheis, who studied with
Lipatti’s widow. With Lipatti’s meticulous, gracious-mannered biographer,
Grigore Barguaunu, in Paris. With the patient, wise Christian Mitetelu and his
violinist wife Ioana Raluca Voicu, who guided me through the finer points of
Romania’s otherwise baffling political history.
With the disarmingly personable historic recordings expert Mark Ainley,
in Vancouver, who recently discovered 15 minutes of Lipatti playing Scarlatti
and Brahms, and believes there is more out there yet.
I
also started to make discoveries of my own. During a study trip to Bucharest, I
found the Lipatti family home in danger of demolition and launched a campaign
to try and save it (so far, successful). I tracked down 27 seconds of cine film
showing Lipatti at a garden party in Lucerne in 1947 - the only footage in
existence - and premiered it at last November’s Lipatti centenary concert at
Cadogan Hall. Since then, I travelled to Geneva and unearthed two major hauls
of unpublished papers and photographs, including intimate love letters and
diaries. (I don’t blush easily but some are really intimate.)
The
question I am now faced with is what to do with this wealth of new material. So
far I have written an article about Lipatti for the Daily Telegraph (‘Is
this the Greatest Pianist of the 20th Century?’) and championed him for an
episode of ‘Great Lives’ on BBC Radio 4. I have enough research for a new
biography, except that I have been reliably informed that it would not be
published, because the subject matter is ‘too esoteric’. My current hope is to
interest a documentary film producer in the project, using the cine film
footage as a peg, and interspersing the story with interviews of some of the
compelling figures that make up his cult following today. There is a ‘peg’, too
- the 70th anniversary of the Last Recital (and Lipatti’s death) falls in 2020.
Whatever
the end result, the time I have spent with Lipatti, his story and - of course -
his legendary recordings, has been among the most enriching of my life. Those
Sunday evenings at boarding school were not wasted.
•
If readers would like to get in touch with me
regarding anything Lipatti, please feel free via orlando.murrin@gmail.com. Particularly if
you happen to have in your attic the lost recording of Lipatti playing
Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, broadcast by the Third Programme at 9.30pm on 20
April 1948…
•
The newly discovered recordings of Lipatti playing
Scarlatti and Brahms are due to be released imminently by Marston Records
(though they’ve been saying that for months)
