Dinu Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti was born in Bucharest on March 19, 1917 and showed his exceptional musical talent at a very young age. Born into a musical family (his father was a diplomat but also studied violin with Karl Flesch and later in Paris with Pablo de Sarasate), the four year old Constantin-Dinu, sitting on the knees of his mother, played already the first prelude of Bach's WTK I, which he learned by ear, listening to his father and his mother at the piano who played the piece in the Gounod transcription often at home for pleasure. One year later, at five, he gave his first public concert playing pieces by Bach and Mozart and also his own compositions. Later as a student of Florica Musicescu at the Bucharest Conservatory he was able to develop his talent quickly in a very natural way, studying and performing first at home and then at the conservatory, culminating in concerts at the famous Bucharest concert hall Ateneul, still the main concert hall of today's Romanian concert life.

In 1933 Lipatti participated in an International Piano Competition in Vienna with Wilhelm Backhaus and Alfred Cortot in the jury. After winning the second prize (first prize was awarded by the Polish pianist Boleslav Khon who was at the time thirty years old), Alfred Cortot invited Lipatti to study with him in Paris at the L'Ecole Normale de Musique. In Paris he met his compatriot Clara Haskil which led to a lifelong professional friendship.

Returning home frequently for study, composition and vacationing, the Lipatti family stayed during the summers at a wonderful vacation home in a Neo-Roman style which his father had built. This house in Fundateanca (near Pitesti, about hundred kilometres north-west of Bucharest) is still there today in the midst of nature and is currently a memorial house, with a small museum about Lipatti's life and his own Bechstein Grand Piano.

After Lipatti's death in 1950, his mother Anna wrote a small booklet were she describes the thoughts and feelings of her son:

‘Dinu, dès son arrivée à la campagne, s’installa au piano Bechstein que son père lui avait acheté, et fut enchanté de la résonance. Il était en pleine évolution comme on le voit sur la photo à son Bechstein. Il était enfin heureux, à la campagne, délivré du protocole de la ville, dans les belles forêts odorantes, le parc, le gazouillement des oiseaux, les bêtes, les paysans, tout le charmait et c’est là, à Fundateanca, qu’il aurait voulu passer toute sa vie’.

(Anna Lipatti: la vie du pianiste Dinu Lipatti, p. 70)

After his study in Paris with Cortot, with Charles Munch for conducting and with Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger for composition, Lipatti stayed in Romania, making concert tours in Germany and Italy in 1936 and later in Scandinavia in 1943 with his future wife Madeleine Cantacuzene, also a student of Florica Musicescu. After this tour Lipatti did not return to Romania due to the war and stayed with Madeleine in Geneva where he was appointed professor at the Conservatoire. Here he was not only devoted to his students, but also made many new friends among them the Swiss composer Frank Martin and his wife Maria. Later the Martin family moved to the Netherlands and when Lipatti was there for concerts he stayed with Frank and Maria Martin at their house at the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.

The photo below shows them together in the summer of 1944 in front of the farmhouse of maecenas, conductor and composer Paul Sacher in Pratteln (about fifteen kilometres from Basel)

Here Lipatti worked on Frank Martin's Ballade for piano and orchestra which he later performed in two concerts in Lausanne and Geneva with the Orchestra de la Suise Romande under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. (In the same concert Lipatti also played Liszt first piano concerto)