Great Pianists Of The 20th Century, Vol. 65

Dinu Lipatti: piano

The sensitivity and beauty of Dinu Lipatti's playing has for me, never been equalled. With flawless technique and extraordinary phrasing, he seemed to capture the core essence, the soul of the music. Born in 1917, he came from a musical family and his godfather was the composer George Enescu. A child prodigy, he started recording when he was 20, and the excerpts from the Brahms Waltzes, Op. 39 on disc 1, tracks # 10-17, are from that period, and he plays the original four-hand version, with his teacher Nadia Boulanger. The rest of the selections on this stupendous compilation are from the years 1947 through 1950, the last being the Schubert Impromptus (disc 1, # 7-8), from a live recording of his final concert in September, at the Besancon Music Festival. One would never imagine, listening to these two beautiful pieces, that he was in excruciating pain from the leukemia that would take his life three months later.