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Radu Lupu Rarities · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Disler and I welcome you to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to
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  piano recordings. We talked about Murray Pariah last time and his fantastic recording of the
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  Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 29, the mighty hammer clavier. And Murray Pariah, of course,
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  was a close friend and colleague of the great pianist Rado Lupu, who we lost in 2022. Rado
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  Lupu was one of the most acclaimed pianists of his generation. He was known for his poetic
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  temperament and his technical refinement, as well as his absolutely luminous, rounded and full-bodied
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  sonority. This was a sonority that could reach out to the furthest regions of any concert hall
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  without ever losing definition. I heard Rado Lupu many times in concert. I actually invited him to
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  sit with me for a drink when I was listening to the great jazz pianist Dato Moroni playing in a
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  hotel bar in Luzern. This was right after Rado Lupu had played this gorgeous enchumon recital at
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  the Luzern Piano Festival. And I had the audacity and nerve to grab Rado Lupu in the hotel lobby
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  right outside the bar. And he must have been intrigued because he came in and he joined me
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  for a drink and he really liked Dato Moroni. He left after a little while, but I'm very proud
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  that I was able to do that. Rado Lupu did not make many commercial recordings and in fact by
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  the mid-1990s he made the decision never to record in the studio again, although he did continue to
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  give concerts. So it's been up to the DoReMi label in Canada to help fill in the gaps, so to speak,
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  and they have been issuing a series of volumes. Each one is a double album, I believe, and these
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  releases consist of archival material with Rado Lupu. They are broadcasts from radio transmissions
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  and live concerts, and they often include repertoire that Rado Lupu otherwise did not record.
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  The most recent release that I received for review was volume six in this series, and I've
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  posted a link to my review of this release that appeared on ClassicsToday.com. The main feature
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  of this release is a broadcast recital from Tokyo that took place on October 16th, 1987,
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  and it features music of Mozart and Chopin. It includes three Mozart solo works that Rado Lupu
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  did not record commercially, the C major sonata, Kershaw 330, the A minor sonata, Kershaw 310,
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  and the A minor rondo, Kershaw 511. One could say that the performance of the rondo is highly
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  rhetorical and really bordering on the romantic. It's almost Brahmsian in its way. The two sonatas
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  have outer movements that are played with a lot of attention to detail, yet there's a kind of
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  classical reserve about them. I find the Chopin selections actually more interesting, and it's
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  not just because Rado Lupu did not otherwise record any of Chopin's music, so far as I know.
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  His performance on this recital of Chopin's sonata in B minor, the sonata number three,
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  I think is pretty remarkable for its tonal imagination and the pianist's constant
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  attentiveness to what is going on in the left-hand writing. The largo movement, for me,
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  receives one of the best performances I know on record. It never drags or wilts on the vine.
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  It moves forward at an ideal pace, and it really sings out. The opus 27 nocturnes are less
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  consistent. I find that the D flat nocturne, opus 27 number two, in the hands of Rado Lupu,
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  sometimes seems a little hectic or impatient when the pianist approaches climaxes.
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  But the opposite is true in his C sharp minor nocturne, opus 27 number one, where Lupu tends
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  to hold back a bit at the big central climax. I wish he didn't. There's also a performance
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  in this collection from 1967 when Lupu was all of 22 years old. It's the Prelude and Fugue in B flat
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  minor from Bach's well-tempered Clavier Book One. And this is pure unadulterated romantic Bach that
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  seems to follow the playbook of such Russian Bach piano interpreters like Samuel Feinberg or,
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  I guess at times, Maria Judina. And there's liberal use of the pedal. And this is not the kind of
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  Bach pianism we are used to hearing these days from people like Andras Schiff or Angela Hewitt.
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  But, you know, give the young Rado Lupu a break. He was still relatively a kid, you know. I should
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  also mention that there are two Mozart concertos in this collection, the A major, Kershaw 414,
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  and the C major, Kershaw 467. The C major is the famous Elvira Madigan concerto because the slow
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  movement was prominently featured in the soundtrack of the Swedish film Elvira Madigan. I've never
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  seen that film, by the way. Anyway, Rado Lupu recorded these two concertos in the studio
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  in 1974 with Yuri Siegel conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. And those are excellent
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  performances. But these live versions with Gary Bertini conducting date from a few years later,
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  and they feature some German radio orchestras. I like these performances better than the
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  DECA recordings because, first of all, Rado Lupu seems to be a little more dynamic and spontaneous.
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  And also Gary Bertini gets his musicians to play with more force and presence, and he gives the
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  important woodwind writing more prominence than in the Yuri Siegel interpretations. So if you are a
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  fan of Rado Lupu and if you are a piano maven, I can't imagine you not being a fan of Rado Lupu.
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  You certainly will want to check out volume six in the Doremi Labels Rado Lupu live series.
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  This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide
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  to piano recordings. And I look forward to being with you for the next episode. Take good care.