Last Concert

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 947, 4 October 1957, Page 25

Last Concert

UITE. by accident, since the pro- " gramme was not advertised by anything more specific than Music of the Masters, I heard from 1ZB last week the last public concert by the great Rumanian pianist Dinu Lipatti, who died in Switzerland in 1950 at the age of 33. In his recordings, this pianist

combines a fierce musical energy with the most poignant poetry, and both these qualities were present in these excerpts from his last recital. Conditions, no doubt hastily improvised, were far from ideal for recording, and bass notes often blurred. But every phrase of the Mozart A Minor sonata, that enigmatic and deeply tragic work, was stamped with a musical intelligence as striking and authentic as any displayed in our time. Mortally ill he may have | been (he had only two months to live) but one would not have known it from his glittering performances of two Schubert Impromptus, or of several Chopin Waltzes (he played them all in the second half, and we heard four in this programme). In The Record Guide, that vast encyclopaedia of musical taste and judgment, the authors suggest that it is almost impossible in this democratic age for an artist to convey Chopin’s aristocratic refinement towards the high society of his time. They suggested that, if anyone, Lipatti was uniquely equipped to do so. From what I heard in this recital, I would say that they were right. A great artist, and much mourned, he still can live powerfully in programmes such as this.