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The Complete 1947 UK Columbia Recordings

March 19, 2011 by

These notes were written shortly before the article for IPQ (early 1999 was a busy time!). Included here is the original text, but with endnotes relating to information that warrants further attention.

Dinu Lipatti’s 1947 UK Columbia recordings capture his pianism at its dynamic peak. After the failed attempt at making records the preceding year in Zurich (technical deficiencies resulted in their being scrapped), enthusiasm was no doubt high as Lipatti went to London twice, in February/March and again in September, for a series of concerts, broadcasts, and recording sessions. Conditions at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London (including the extraordinarily responsive Steinway 299) were excellent and the resulting recordings do not hint at the ill health that forced Lipatti to cancel a number of his London engagements. Presented here in new transfers, these landmarks of pianism – the first post-war recordings of Dinu Lipatti – sound fuller than previously, revealing nuances and interpretative details as if for the first time. (In addition to these London recordings, Lipatti also recorded six 78-rpm sides accompanying the cellist Antonio Janigro at the Wolfbach Studio in Zurich, among them the first movement of Beethoven’s Third Cello Sonata. Only two sides of shorter works from this session were available for release a few years ago.) [i]
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The Chopin Concerto Scandal

March 19, 2011 by

In 1966, EMI issued a previously unknown recording of Chopin’s Piano Concerto #1 in E Minor featuring the pianist Dinu Lipatti. No orchestra or conductor was named. On the record jacket of the British release of the recording in 1971 was the following statement:

“This recording includes a performance by Dinu Lipatti of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1. It comes from a tape, which EMI acquired, made at a concert in Switzerland in May, 1948. Although there is no question that the performance is by Dinu Lipatti, extensive enquiries have failed to establish the name of the conductor and orchestra. However, this particular performance has not been published in the UK before now and is therefore a musical document of rare value.”

When EMI reissued the recording in 1981, the BBC broadcast the record, and a listener wrote in noting its similarity with a Supraphon recording dating from the early 1950s featuring the distinguished Chopin pianist Halina Czerny-Stefanska. Tests by BBC and EMI revealed that the two recordings were identical.
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