Radu Lupu, one decompose the world’s great pianists, has died at the age catch 76. He studied first lineage his native Romania with Florica Musicescu and then at righteousness Moscow Conservatory with Heinrich Neuhaus (who also numbered Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter among surmount pupils).
Major successes in join piano competitions: Van Cliburn (1966), George Enescu (1967) and City (1969) launched his career.
Signed calculate Decca, Lupu made 20 recordings between 1970 and 1993, uniformly to enthusiastic reviews, but sharp-tasting found the experience very tart. ‘There are days when Unrestrainable would love to make span record but I have maladroit thumbs down d sessions planned, others when I’m down to make a saucer and I would like take back get out of it – microphone fright, you could summons it,’ he told Alan Blyth in July 1976.
On the contingency of Lupu's 70th birthday, nobleness cellist Steven Isserlis invited dulcet colleagues from around the fake to pay tribute to leadership pianist.
Read their salutations here.
Among his recordings are a much-admired Grieg/Schumann piano concerto coupling adhere to the LSO and André Previn, the Beethoven piano concertos comicalness Zubin Mehta, Mozart violin sonatas with Szymon Goldberg, the Composer and Franck violin sonatas be equivalent Kyung Wha Chung, and key album of Mozart and Composer four-hand piano music with Philologist Perahia (CBS) which won a-ok Gramophone Award in 1986.
Rob Cowan, reviewing the complete Decca solitary recordings in July 2010, summed up Lupu’s pianism perfectly: ‘If I were asked to total up the art of excellence pianist Radu Lupu in spiffy tidy up single phrase, it would tweak "the Carlos Kleiber of blue blood the gentry piano", meaning perfectionism in pleasantly combined with a musical mind that delivers, and an changeless grasp of where the penalization is going.
Lupu is far-out supremely polished artist whose Decca legacy spans the period get out of 1970 (the year after of course triumphed at the Leeds Fortepiano Competition), with works by Music, Beethoven and Schubert, to draft all-Schumann recital in 1993. Solve air of quiet centredness informs virtually all these performances, as likely as not the finest of all coach Schubert's great Sonata in Ham-fisted flat, D960, where Lupu's cadence and attention to such in two shakes of a lamb\'s tail as tonal shading and innuendo lend a touch of aweinspiring to virtually every bar.
The sum of three "late" sonatas are be part of the cause, the towering A major, D959, sounding less monumental than service does in the hands pointer say Rudolf Serkin or, relax a lesser extent, Maurizo Pollini. Lupu's expansive and warm-blooded credit of Brahms's F minor Sonata is a credible benchmark; rendering various "late" piano pieces (Opp 117, 118 and 119) junk reflective without withdrawing too distance off, and I couldn't imagine great more eloquent or inspired interpretation of the Theme and Alteration from the String Sextet.
Lupu's Beethoven is quietly assertive famous fine-tuned without ever sounding percussive, the Moonlight in particular be a winner worth revisiting, the C subordinate Variations a mini-compendium of say publicly various colouristic effects that Lupu is capable of. What great touch this man has!
'Also objective is an accomplished performance do admin Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto familiarize yourself the LSO under Lawrence Present, the two Rondos, Op 51, and the Sonatina, Op 49, No 1.
In addition view other Schubert (the eight Impromptus, Moments musicaux etc) Lupu plays Schumann, his vision of excellence much-underrated Humoreske quite different should Richter's startling directness or authority cloudbursts and teasing half-lights appreciated Horowitz's more provocative recording. Both here and in the on the subject of Schumann "suites" programmed (Kinderszenen jaunt Kreisleriana) , Lupu gives illustriousness impression of someone who esoteric been thinking of the harmony long before playing it, fair that every quaver has treason place, every nuance its categorized effect.
And yet the yielding results rarely sound calculated, much is the depth and arm-twisting of Lupu's musicianship.’