Dinu Lipatti - life and legacy

[rustleofspring]

I am researching the life and legacy of Lipatti.
It's a long shot, I know, but did anyone hear him play? (Last recital was September 1950.)
Any first hand experiences of him, his widow, family?
I'm also looking for information about other facets of his life - for instance, his teacher Flora Musicescu, his tours during the war, his relationship with Cortot.
Thanks in anticipation.
 

[mjames]

I am researching the life and legacy of Lipatti.
It's a long shot, I know, but did anyone hear him play? (Last recital was September 1950.)

 

Theyre either dead or too old to know what the internet is.

"wuuuut? the internet? is that some kind of fish?"
XDD

Plus i love this guy! He has such a beautiful singing tone.

[huaidongxi]

have you contacted Mark Ainley ? his site has some information that I have not come across elsewhere.  it appears that Lipatti didn't meet Cortot until the Vienna competition of 1933 (jury included Cortot, Arrau, Friedman, Rachmaninov, Hess, Landowska, Ney et. al.) when Cortot protested Lipatti being given second prize rather than first because of his youth (16).  this would support Cortot's own assertion that Lipatti was fully formed musically before getting any advice from him.  Boulanger was possibly the greater influence among his instructors in Paris.  Ainsley also dispels miscellaneous disinformation that the producer/impressario Legge perpetuated.

it's a great project you've taken on.  some of the lucky kids who were taken to Lipatti's recitals and concerts after the war are still around somewhere (assuming they've had better medical care than the great pianist had access to).  there's another interesting story within the story, about the synthesis of cortisone, which made many of his best known recordings possible.  buona fortuna

[rustleofspring]

Thank you. Yes, Mark Ainley has done a truly remarkable job and was very helpful when I contacted him. There are a couple of major gaps in the story which I am trying to fill in, hence my interest in 1939-1946 and the friendship with the problematical M. Cortot.
I am meeting a pianist who took lessons from Lipatti's widow and knew Lipatti's brother. I was put in touch with another well-known piano teacher, but it turned out he was mistaken, he cannot have heard Lipatti because the dates don't match. So any further leads would be welcome...

[huaidongxi]

as you know quite well, you're searching for information in a very dark time period of human consciousness and memory.  privacy, concealment, disinformation were/are the accepted m.o. for many who survived the period in central europa and the balkans.  if you are taking the opportunity to attempt research in Switzerland, which became Lipatti's home in that period, you'll probably get to learn how much the Swiss stereotype for secrecy is actual.  the artist I've become immersed with, Bartok, chose to give up financial independence with relatively high social status and comfort, because he refused to continue living under German occupation.  if you can uncover Lipatti's corresponding life chapter it would be a revelatory biographical contribution.  peace

[rustleofspring]

Very interesting, thanks again. I had no idea about Bartok and I will look into this - is there any particular account of his war years you would recommend? (No problem if not, I will hunt and see what I can find.)
Day after tomorrow I am meeting a pianist who studied with his wife and knew his brother, which I am very much looking forward to.

[huaidongxi]

my exploration of Bartok has barely begun.  by necessity, from having only rudimentary technical instruction in childhood, and close to zero disciplined practice for too many years, picked up some of his pieces to relearn technique and touch.  like Bach, he was a virtuoso keyboardist (crucial difference, on our modern instrument of course) who also composed prolifically for practitioners/students at every level of ability.  as an emigre he did not attempt the career path of Rachmaninov, concertizing, though by all accounts he was R's peer at the instrument.  two possible reasons for this, his disinclination to dilute his focus by performing marketable/popular repertoire, and his declining health.  the irony of it, his recorded legacy as a pianist is very sparse for a musician active in his period, though his start as an 'outsider' (in the context of the late Romantic music dominant during his musical education) was in part inspired by his ethnomusicological field work, using early 20th century wax cylinder machines.

only speculation on my part, but how could he not find the fascisti 'race purification' completely repulsive with his understanding of the evolution of music/dance culture in Hungary and Roumania, particularly the contributions of the Romany ('gypsy', some of whom enslaved to provide music for Ottoman rulers of the region), who were priority 'targets' of Verfolgung und Vernichtung under German occupation.

had Lipatti managed to survive another six months and record what he'd intended, we'd have his performance of a Bartok concerto.  peace

[rustleofspring]

We do have Lipatti playing Bartok's 3rd piano concerto; I can't recall the history of the recording, but it was released, along with a few other 'discoveries', a few years back. (I listen to it on Spotify - if I had a disc I would send you a copy.)

Is it possible to tell me any more more about Bartok's attitude towards the German occupation, Nazi restrictions on repertoire and so on?

I have just received a long essay by Walter Legge about Lipatti, which I will look forward to comparing with Mark Ainley's commentary on the same.

Thanks.

[huaidongxi]

thank you for informing me of the Lipatti performance of the Bartok concerto, was under the impression it was an unrealized project.  you are probably referring to the recording from Baden Baden, 1948, with Paul Sacher conducting.  Sacher was a close associate of Bartok.  if you go the the site of the musicologist R.Greenberg, robertgreenbergmusic.com, he has an article on Bartok's sixth string quartet, composed in 1939 as he was planning to leave Hungary.  quoted in the article, a 1938 letter Bartok wrote to Sacher after die Deutsche marched over Austria and absorbed it into their reich.  "There is the imminent danger that Hungary will also surrender to this system of robbery and murder."  he goes on to describe living and working under German occupation would be 'inconceivable'.  also in this article, his response when his Vienna publisher, Universal editions, after its 'reformation' under the fascisti, sent him and Kodaly forms requesting verification of their 'Aryan pedigree'.

the town of Bartok's birth was part of the Austro Hungarian empire at the time, and with the numerous political shifts since, it is actually part of Roumania at present, and the town of his childhood is now located in the borders of Slovakia.  one of his early piano instructors was a student of Liszt, and with his academic degrees from Budapest, Bartok was probably very capable (possibly required to in the conservatory) of performing Liszt quite well, something we'd hardly associate him with now.

his third piano concerto was composed in the last years of his life when he lived in the u.s., for his second wife, mother of Peter, the editor of the modern editions of some of his father's compositions.  it was published posthumously, and Lipatti's performance might have been just its second performance after Bartok's widow. Bartok not only shared Lipatti's homeland, but medical affliction as well, leukaemia.  peace

[rustleofspring]

Thank you very much indeed, that's very helpful information about Bartok, very clear indeed. Some of Lipatti's compositions are considered to have been strongly influenced by Bartok. I haven't had any evidence that the two met, though it is perfectly possible that they did, through Sacher, for instance.
Yesterday I found some revealing information about Enescu and Jora. Enescu got out of Romania after the war, Jora stayed and fought his corner as best he could, but hated the system and fell more or less into disgrace.
Thank you again for your illuminations. A colleague suggested I might put an ad in the New York Review of Books, or some such place, asking for first hand recollections of Lipatti, as I am still on the hunt for original material.
Kind regards.