Lupu Live in Great Sound

 Lupu live in great sound. He is so different live from the studio, and it's rare that the sound of the broadcasts was adequate. In the studio he was one of our great pianists, but he was not one of the great artists of our time. In particularly challenging works, you could hear him struggling to capture every nuance of his conception, whereas live he simply gave himself to the flow of the moment. A practiced studio hand like Brendel had no such trouble, and was entirely natural in the studio in a manner to which Lupu could only aspire. When you hear Lupu live you understand instantly why he stopped recording when he was my age. Most of his recordings are great, but they are not Lupu.

At one point I compared him to Lipatti. What a stupid comparison that was. Lipatti was 19th century Romania that looked to France for its inspiration: indescribable profundity, yes, but profundity through lucidity, elegance, perfection. Lipatti gave us the conceptions we'd all heard in our heads with an extra component of indefinable touch and sound.

If Lipatti looked to France, Lupu could not help but look to Soviet Russia. He rarely played with the thunder of Richter and Gilels, though this recital surely shows he could. But he did play with their chiaroscuro darkness. All those pianists behind the iron curtain saw things we only see in deepest nightmare, and their playing elucidates that dark bearing of witness. There was very little Russian repertoire in his recitals, but he approached the Austro-German line in a manner neither Austrian nor German.

It's beyond cliché to call Lupu unique, but uniqueness testifies for itself, and he was not unique in the self aggrandizing way. He was a hammerless pianist with perhaps the most singing, sustained tone in 20th century piano history, yet he could turn it off and be all hammers too. He rarely obeyed the dynamics and phrasings of the printed page, but he provided dynamics and voice leadings all his own, provided by the harmonic analysis he clearly pursued rigorously.

Other pianists of his fach like Brendel and Schiff are (or became) romantic classicists, but Lupu was an utterly unique classical romanticist. Rigorous yet utterly spontaneous, a rare artist on a quantum level understanding of just how much risk to allow himself so that every risk pays off.

He is one of our great musical models from whom there is so much to learn, but artists can never learn by imitating him. He is, quite simply, Radu Lupu, an artist whose appearance can never be followed, yet should always be consulted. When I practice piano with my infinitesimal ability, I inevitably think of Lupu's private intensity, and the act of playing overcomes me with an inexpressible calm.

May his memory be a blessing and it always will be.

Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abeQvbEaaCg