The pianist Radu Lupu, alchemist who transformed the intangible into sound, died Sunday in Lausanne at the age of 76 following a long illness, we learned Monday in the middle of the afternoon. He had retired from performing three years ago.
Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, February 17, 2009, Radu Lupu and Neeme Järvi are the OSM’s guests. A fraction of a second will remain etched forever: the attack by Radu Lupu on 2and movement of 3and Concerto by Beethoven. It will be the concert of the year, and the unsurpassable 3and Concerto of a life of concerts.
To hear Radu Lupu was to have the chance to experience moments that no pianist has ever created. In Montreal, in 2008, at the Théâtre Maisonneuve, he appropriated the 1er Book from Preludes by Debussy.
Even in its few excesses, Lupu fascinated. It was a very strange record that made him notice in 1973: the Sonatas n° 8, 14 and 21 by Beethoven, approached in a very slow tempo.
Lupu, a bearded man with deep interpretations, was not always bearded. He had no hair system when recording in November 1970 the 3and Concerto de Beethoven, under the direction of Lawrence Foster, for his debut with Decca, who had hired him after his victory at the Leeds Competition in 1969.
In Leeds, Lupu had been admitted to the final in extremis against the opinion of the piano icon in the United Kingdom Clifford Curzon, but defended by a fierce lawyer within the jury: the great Czech pianist Ivan Moravec. The number of candidates admitted to the final had to be increased to find a compromise. In private, Moravec was very proud of it. Did Lupu know it himself one day? Ironically, his Decca-recorded Schuberts eclipsed Curzon’s on the same label.
Radu Lupu, born in 1945 in Romania, was a pupil of Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow, obtained his 1er Price of the Moscow Conservatory at 16 and had won the Van Cliburn competition three years before Leeds.
The pianist recorded marvels, but his discography, which holds 28 CDs, entirely on Decca (apart from two Romanian discs in the 1960s), does not trace the complete picture. Lupu recorded only five of 32 Sonatas by Beethoven; only two concertos and no sonata by Mozart, where his touch worked wonders; no Debussy or Ravel for solo piano; a single Schumann piano disc; a too early version of 1er Concerto of Brahms, and never the 2and Concerto. Only Schubert is relatively well served.
As our colleague Julian Skykes beautifully wrote, from Weather from Geneva, Radu Lupu was a “pianist of the unspeakable” with a “velvet touch and celestial nuances”.
His last presence in Montreal dates back to 2014. In the 4and Concerto of Beethoven, he had known some difficulties. But we had noted these “other things, infinitely precious: dreams, escape, permanent recreation”. The part of the dream created by the alchemist will remain forever indelible.