Radu Lupu would have been 80
Daily Comfort ZoneThe ethereal Romanian pianist was born on November 30 1945 into a Jewish family and retired in poor health in 2019.
A bearded wonder on an office chair who preferred to learn his scores away from the piano and shunned media interviews like infection.
He died in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 17, 2022.
Next week, to mark his 80th birthday, Decca are issuing a 6-CD box of unreleased performances. The least expected – and the ones I am keenest to hear are Bartok’s country ramblings and the Aaron Copland piano sonata. I cannot imagine in my mind’s ear what Radu must have made of them.
There are many great pianists, but there was only one Radu Lupu.
First heard him when he was 22, with Karajan, in the Beethoven C-Minor Concerto — mesmerizing, no-nonsense, and happily preserved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ2bvBtoioY
Thank you so much for sharing! Pure beauty. However, he was 32 at the time (March 1978).
Ah yes. Now I feel a bit younger. The Largo is too slow really, isn’t it, listening again today? But he avoids the trap of rushing the Finale.
I have heard so many pianists live, and the deepest impressions were Brendel and Lupu.
For me, Lupu and Argerich in that same generation. Zimerman too, though a little younger. My other favourites are all dead… as is Lupu, alas.
Will they be released on Apple Classical?
Had the pleasure of hearing him in two recitals in Tel Aviv years ago. An artist from another age, who put the music before his own ego, and wasn’t expected to do otherwise by agents, record labels, or audiences. And also didn’t rush to make a name for himself playing Rachmaninoff’s 3rd, Liszt’s etudes, or the Goldberg Variations when he was barely twenty.
A wonderful live Beethoven 3rd concerto with NYOI and Klaus Tennstedt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhs_iAg4cak
Happily, very few duplications between this Decca 6 CD box and the 14 CDs of live performances on Doremi, apart from the Bartok Out of Doors, Copland Sonata, and the Schumann Symphonic Etudes.
‘Country ramblings’ indeed?
And to think that with today’s medical advances 80 is the new 70. He should still be with us, alas.
I’ll always remember reading here on Slipped Disc a great recollection of Radu Lupu by a Decca engineer, wherein he compared Lupu and Schiff to the detriment of the latter. It confirmed everything I already knew about Schiff from his recordings – talented but pedantic and arrogant – while Lupu was the more mercurial, tortured but far more inspired – and inspiring – pianist. He was unique in being almost the only pianist who came of age in the second half of the twentieth century to be on the same plane as those of the “golden age”: Schnabel, Arrau, Cortot, Gilels, Backhaus, Serkin, Kempff. Also almost unique among pianists of his generation in having a truly beautiful sound. Needless to say, no one left alive who is remotely as as great as he was. Dearly missed.