Few other historical figures can claim such a constant positive reputation like Lipatti’s: the audience and the critics are competing with generous superlatives about his musical and personal qualities: from "prince of pianists” and "all too early gone angel” up to "artist of divine spirituality”. The mere association with the Romanian musician confers even to established artists an added credential. Such was Sviatoslav Richter’s case, who in 1957 was called a "Russian Lipatti”[i]. The young generation of pianists is grateful when a critic mentions their name in the same sentence with Lipatti’s[ii]. At the same time, whenever one of the established contemporary pianists mention Lipatti’s legacy as an inspiration; this gesture implies their reverence towards an absolute value, universally accepted[iii].

Even during Lipatti’s lifetime, the vast majority of documents mentioning him attest to a consensus about his genius. Yet exactly in this unanimity of opinion lurks the danger of losing objectivity, concerning both the accuracy of biographical details and his place in the history of modern piano playing. As Terry Teachout wrote in a 2006 article: "Thanks to the dramatic story of his illness and death, he is remembered not as a historical figure but as a near-mythic one who made some of the most beautiful piano recordings of the century. Yet these recordings, powerfully compelling though they were and are, do not exist in a cultural vacuum. To the contrary, they were made by a profoundly self-aware artist who was in every sense a man of his time."

Lipatti, a man of his time: In the following four scenes I will try to sketch to which extent Lipatti’s present image is set in stone or can be enhanced by adding new details.

I. Besancon, September 16, 1950.

The last public concert of the Romanian pianist concluded with Bach’s Choral "Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”: this is the legend’s time of birth. Lipatti’s last recital in Besancon retains a legendary aura in the contemporary consciousness, probably at the same level as Horowitz’ last recital in Moscow in 1986.

For the Symposium I initially wanted to trace a bow between Lipatti’s interpretation of the Choral, which concluded his last recital, compared to Myra Hess’ (the author of the 1926 transcription) and Mihaela Ursuleasa’s 1996[iv]concert performance. At the first glance, there were plenty of contact points for such a comparison: it was the first andthe last piece Lipatti played in public as an adult (he included Bach’s Choral in a May 20, 1935 concert in Paris, dedicated to his teacher, the French composer Paul Dukas, who had died three days before). Myra Hess’ reputation is strongly linked to her transcription of the Choral "Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (as this anecdote[v]attests). Finally, the young Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa played the same Choral as an encore after her April 5, 1996 concert with the National Radio Orchestra. At the time she was 17 and had won the year before, at the same age as Lipatti, a big international piano contest. Just like Lipatti, Mihaela prematurely died, aged only 33.

In spite of all these fine coincidences, the deciding connecting factor was missing, as there is no recording of the Choral "Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, which Lipatti played as an encore during his last recital in Besancon. The legendary aura of his last recital projected his July 1950 studio recording over his last recital.

Fortunately, Philippe Roger’s 2010 documentary and Andrè Tubeuf’s "The 14th Waltz” (2008) deal in great detail with this legendary concert.

Without doubt, memory alone isn’t a reliable witness; that even wide-accepted facts harbour plenty of surprises, this is the reason of the present contribution.

II. Vienna, June 1933

Just turned 16, Dinu Lipatti travels from Bucharest to Vienna, where he enrolls to an international piano competition. The jury refuses him the first prize, after which the young Romanian pianist writes his friend Miron Soarec, not without self-irony: "I am awaiting a reporter taking interviews! What do you want, I became someone important”; signed, "the second prize”[vi]. At least this is the account of the event, backed by Lipatti’s own letters. Interestingly, this biographical detail is, after a careful look at the sources, full of inaccuracies.

Both the exact date of the competition and the laureate and jury list differ from one source to another. Mark Lindsey Mitchell’s book published in 2000[vii], indicate the competition took place in 1934 (this source is quoted on the homepage of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw[viii]. Other English-speaking sources place the same event in 1932 (!), as reported by James Methuen-Campbell in his 1981 book and quoted by the Polish Chopin Information Centre.

Who exactly won the Vienna Piano Competition where Lipatti took the second prize home? Lipatti himself mentions as winner „a Polish of 26 years, with lots of experience, command and calm, Ladislau Kohn"[ix] (sic). Considering Boleslaw Kon (1906-1936) as the one Lipatti was referring to, he indeed may have won the competition in question, yet the German-speaking sources indicate as winner Karlrobert Kreiten (born in Bonn in 1916).  The weekly Der Spiegel writes in the December 14, 1987 issue[x]: „with Dante-Fantasy by Liszt, he (Kreiten) not only impressed the ever severe jury member Wilhelm Backhaus, but he also triumphed before the genius of Romanian Dinu Lipatti, who even after the protests of his mentor (Alfred Cortot) had to be content with Silver".

This information is taken over not only by many other German sources on Kreiten but also by other English-speaking sources about German musical life during the Third Reich[xi].

Neither Kon nor Kreiten have enjoyed a long life and career, their reputation being accessible only to a very small circle of professionals. A rather interesting parallel with Kreiten is worth pursuing: the then 17-year old German pianist would go on and win the Mendelssohn Prize in Berlin also in 1933, then continues his studies in Cologne. From 1937 he would be attending a Claudio Arrau’s masterclass at the Berlin Stern Conservatory. Arrau himself would write about Kreiten: "Karlrobert was one of the biggest piano talents I ever met”.

Kreiten himself was denied attaining full artistic maturity as the result of dramatic circumstances, claiming his life at only 27.

III. September 1943

In his Memoires published in 1998, the legendary recording producer Walter Legge writes: "Lipatti stayed in Romania until 1943, when together with his fiancée Madeleine Cantacuzeno he escaped from Bucharest, and by devious ruses and routes, they arrived, via Stockholm, in Geneva, with a joint capital of five Swiss francs”[xii]. Both Madeleine Lipatti, the pianist’s wife and Ana, his mother, describe the episode of leaving the country in rather neutral terms. One can only wonder about the reasons why the Romanian friends and family played down this episode and the path leading to Dinu’s and Madeleine’s arrival to Switzerland, in October 1943.

From the moment WWII broke out in 1939 and until the permanent move to Geneva in 1943, Lipatti "concentrated his activities primarily in his homeland (Romania) and a few neutral countries”, according to his friend Miron Soarec[xiii]. Which is only half-true, observes Terry Teachout, since what both his closest family members and friends in one hand and Walter Legge on the other „fail to mention that, starting in 1941, Lipatti gave concerts in Germany, Italy, Austria, and other Nazi-controlled countries."

No doubt, Lipatti – as many other musicians – experienced first hand the increasingly difficult wartime living and working conditions. Hence, to focus only on his musical accomplishments without acknowledging the exact circumstances that enabled his successes would mean reducing  the wartime to a background noise with no real significance.

Can we change today’s resonance of those years by enlarging the historical perspective? Here two examples:

On January 14, 1943, Lipatti recorded in Berlin his own composition, The Concertino in Classical Style op. 3, with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hans von Benda. The two would be playing together again in April same year, this time at the Bucharest Athenaeum (where this photograph was made), also with the same orchestra.

Who was Hans von Benda and what kind of ensemble was he conducting at that time? "Das Kammerorchester der Berliner Philharmoniker” (Chamber Orchestra of the Berlin Philharmonic) was established by Hans von Benda in 1935 in order to enable its conductor’s personal and political goals. As described by Misha Aster in The Reich's Orchestra: The Berlin Philharmonic 1933-1945[xiv], „the Kammerorchester’s founding was a political act, initiated by von Benda, but reflecting both ministerial volition and an attempt by the conductor to consolidate favour with the regime: "I recognized,” explained von Benda, "the utility of a chamber orchestra of an approximately 25 players for foreign propaganda, as it represents easy mobility and much lower costs than a large orchestra”.

I am not suggesting that Lipatti was directly involved with the Nazi regime. Yet the conditions that made the recording of the Concertino possible, starting with the very trip from Bucharest to his stay in a Berlin already scarred by war, all these details cannot but have left deep marks on the pianist’s known sensitivity and may have contributed to his decision to leave the country, later in 1943.

Hence there is a big difference between "the pianist decided to change residence from Romania to Switzerland after a concert tour that initially was planned for 10 days” (Madeleine Lipatti) and "refugee” (a term frequently used by many others, including his friend and champion, the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher). This is not only a matter of linguistic differentiation; on the contrary, Lipatti’s decision to leave Romania for good, in the middle of the war, meant for the pianist and his future wife assuming a great deal of risks and is significant for the necessity of pursuing this path.

Almost at the same time as Lipatti fled Romania, Berlin was the showplace of one of the countless war-related tragedies. Ironically, 1943 was fatal for Lipatti’s competitor from Vienna, 10 years before. Karlrobert Kreiten, who already had played twice with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler and whose shooting star status seemed assured, was arrested on May 3, 1943 as a result of a denunciation. The young German pianist, who would turn 27 only a month later, had commited one of the capital crimes that the German civilian population could be guilty of: he listened to the enemy radio program from BBC and expressed freely his critical opinions towards Hitler and the war course.

Following the denunciation, the Gestapo arrested Kreiten just before his May 3, 1943 concert in Heidelberg. Neither the family’s appeals nor Wilhelm Furtwängler’s personal intervention[xv]brought Kreiten’s release. After a show trial during which it became clear that the regime intended to set an example, on September 2, 1943 Kreiten was sentenced to death by hanging and executed 4 days later. A receipt of 639,39 Reichsmarks representing the execution costs was sent to Kreiten’s parents who were given a week to meet the costs.

In retrospect, Claudio Arrau, Kreiten’s teacher in Berlin, wrote in 1983: "Kreiten was one of the biggest piano talents I have ever met. Had he not been executed by the Nazi regime, he would have been taken a place among the greatest German pianists. He and others represent the lost generation who could have been able to follow Wilhelm Kempff and Walter Gieseking”[xvi].

In a different world, Lipatti and Kreiten could have met again, could have worked together. Kreiten could have played Lipatti’s compositions in Germany.

Does it matter whether the winner of the 1933 Vienna Competition was Kreiten or Kon? Does it matter whether this event took place in 1932, 1933 or 1934?

Surely, as shown in the beginning, declaring a victory in front of the 16-year old Lipatti may represent, by mere association with his name, more than a triumph: it can gold-plate a name. I suppose Kreiten’s reputation today and in the future will not essentially suffer, even without the laurels of the Vienna Piano Competition he may have won at only 17. Yet for Kreiten, as well as for Lipatti, a day or a year represents more than a footnote in a short biography. Especially in such cases, omissions or inaccuracies are unacceptable.

IV. Bucharest, 1995

Some 20 years ago, while still a student, I presented my first contribution at Lipatti International Symposium, which took place at Cotroceni Palace. The symposium gathered, for the first time after 1989, distinguished musicians and musicologists honoring Lipatti’s legacy.

My research and study sources were at that time hopelessly scarce, consisting of the Romanian Broadcast’s library and recording collections, a synonym dictionary and plenty of imagination. This imagination, that in fact hid the lack of data, provided Grigore Bargaoanu (the editor of the 1995 Lipatti Symposium contributions) the opportunity to comment and correct my entry. Luckily, my analysis back then was not false, just incomplete. Still, the fact that someone double-checked and corrected the information was a lesson of a lifetime: we can never be sure enough; everything has to be double-checked.

Today’s amount of easily accessible information would have been beyond anyone’s imagination at that time. The rarities which 20 years ago could only be found in the archives and only with special authorization are nowadays available for everyone. Anyone interested in music can freely and uninhibitedly interact on platforms like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. #Lipatti, Dinu Lipatti Society and many others are the go-to addresses where specialists and laymen share their activity and their admiration towards the Romanian musician. Still, such is the present accessibility of historical documents in digital form that it is paramount to try to contain the flow of unverified or erroneous data.

Conclusion

Is there anything new to say about Lipatti? If yes, what that would be?

• Enlargement of the historical context Lipatti was part of
• Periodic double-checking and correction of the data and its interpretation
• Accessibility of the data through digitalization and translation

Ours is a technology-dominated age.  The main drive of the technology is the notion of "upgrade”, meaning permanent renewal and improvement; perfecting his technique drove Lipatti himself, who once wrote in 1939 that he "found a famous system that saves at least 3 hours piano practice a day, which helps more than d’aprés l’ancienne methode(the old method). A true revolution!”[xvii]

The exceptional nature of Lipatti phenomenon won’t change, no matter how much we open the perspective that includes him. At the same time, the veneration of his memory shouldn’t let us accept an informational and technological status quo.