On the day after Christmas, the recordings of a huge name in Romania caused excitement in the most important newspaper in the UK: “Every track is a delight”
A collection of six discs in limited edition released on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the birth of pianist Radu Lupu has excited the delight of one of the music critics of the British newspaper The Guardian. Lupu, considered one of the greatest pianists of his time, died in 2022 in Switzerland.
This six-disc collection, released to mark the late pianist's 80th birthday, is full of surprises and includes rare performances of works by Chopin and Copland, alongside Lupu's legendary performance of Bartók's work at Leeds in 1969.
“Of the hundreds of pianists I have listened to in more than 50 years of recitals, including many of the greatest names of the 20th century, none have given me more constant pleasure or a greater sense of awe than Radu Lupu. If ever a pianist's appearance, especially in the last years of his life, contradicted the character of his performance, it was Lupu: the fact that this extremely serious, bearded figure bushy, bent over the keyboard in a manner more suited to a séance than a recital, could produce a performance of such velvety tonal beauty was quite extraordinary; that such a seductive sound world was allied with a mind of such penetrating musical intelligence seemed at times miraculous,” writes music critic Andrew Clements in the text published by The Guardian.
Who was Radu Lupu
Born in 1945 in Galaţi, Radu Lupu is considered one of the world's greatest pianists. He studied piano with Florica Musicescu and Cella Delavrancea (some of the most important piano teachers of the time), to then study in Moscow and start winning international prizes.
According to the biography on Wikipedia, a concert in London brought him tributes in the British press, and then he began to perform with the world's greatest orchestras. According to the cited source, Radu Lupu's career continued with the most prestigious orchestras and the world's greatest conductors: in 1972 he performed in the USA, in New York, with the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Carlo Maria Giulini, then he toured America for two years, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He subsequently toured Europe, the United States, Israel and China regularly.
He won a Grammy
Between 1970 and 1993, Lupu made over 20 recordings for Decca Records. His solo recordings, which have received considerable acclaim, include works by Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, including all of Beethoven's piano concertos, five piano sonatas and other solo works. In addition, Lupu is also known for his interpretations of works by Bartók, Debussy, Enescu and Janáček, among other composers.
Lupu has been nominated for two Grammy Awards, winning one in 1996 for an album of two Schubert piano sonatas. In 2016 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Throughout his career, Lupu often refused to give media interviews for “fear of being misunderstood or misquoted”. In addition, Lupu usually did not allow his concerts to be broadcast on the radio.
Radu Lupu died on April 17, 2022, at the age of 76, in Lausanne, Switzerland.
A new collection of records
The pianist had retired from the concert stage three years earlier and had stopped recording in the studio several years earlier. The Decca label, for whom he recorded exclusively for over two decades, released his complete recordings in 2015, and with this complete set, you might have thought his legacy was complete.
But to mark what would have been the pianist's 80th birthday, the company produced “this wonderful surprise”, as the Guardian journalist describes it: six discs made up of unreleased studio sessions and BBC, Dutch and SWR radio recordings, dating from 1970 to 2002, of work that Lupu did not otherwise record.
The set of recordings begins with Mozart's piano quartets in G minor and E flat major, for which Lupu collaborated in 1976 with members of the Tel Aviv String Quartet, in performances of such impeccable, studio-worthy quality – Lupu at his inner best in the slow movements, dazzlingly upbeat in the finales – that it's incomprehensible that they haven't been released before.
A 1990s disc of Schubert sonatas – D840 in C major, unfinished, and D850 in D major (in a surprisingly pessimistic, almost angry performance) – completes Lupu's Schubert already in the catalogue, while a series of Haydn and Mozart sonatas from the 1970s and 1980s surprisingly concludes with Schumann's Études Symphoniques, complete with the five “posthumous” variations, it said in the description of the records.
The conclusion of the British journalist is categorical: “every piece is a delight.”
