Patrick Bade
George Enescu and Dinu Lipatti: Great Romanian Musicians

Patrick Bade - George Enescu and Dinu Lipatti: Great Romanian Musicians

- So I’m moving on theoretically like my colleagues at lockdown from Paris to Romania. But actually, as you’ll see, I haven’t altogether left Paris behind. You could claim that Paris was effectively the cultural capital of Romania for much of the 20th century. All the great Romanian artists came here. They spent a lot of time here and quite a few of them, as shall see, are actually buried in Paris in the various Paris cemeteries. But today I’m talking about two of the most celebrated and most charismatic musicians of the 20th century, both born in Romania, George Enescu who you see on the left hand side, and Dinu Lipatti who you see on the right. So, Enescu is regarded as the great national composer of Romania, rather in the way that say Sibelius is the national composer of Finland and Grieg is the national composer of Norway and Nielsen the national composer of Denmark but he’s a lot more than that. He was an incredibly versatile, multi-talented musician. So a distinguished composer, one of the most admired virtuoso violinist of the early 20th century. He was a brilliant pianist. Alfred Cortot actually said that he thought that that Enescu’s piano technique was better than his. Casals called him the most extraordinary musical phenomenon since Mozart, and another famous composer of claimed that his musical memory was so extraordinary. He said that if all the works of Beethoven were destroyed Enescu would be able to sit down and write them out from memory. And he was also, as we shall see, a very great and inspired teacher.

And to add to that he seems to have been a wonderful human being. Nobody really has a bad word to say about him. He was a great inspiration to all his musical colleagues. So this is where he was born in 1881. It’s a little country lodge in Liveni. His parents were reasonably wealthy. They were local landowners. They had eight children but the none of the first seven survived. He was the first child of the family to survive. This is now one of two museums dedicated to Enescu in Romania. This is the other one, the Cantacuzino Palace in Budapest. Very magnificent as you can see. He married into the princely family of Cantacuzino as both my artists did. So did Dinu Lipatti, a generation later. So he was not a man who was at all interested in worldly things. So I don’t think he particularly relished living in a palace, but it’s now, as I said a museum devoted to him. One dissenting voice in this general chorus, this is the very controversial Romanian soprano, Angela Gheorghiu. She got herself into very, very hot water recently by people thought she was disrespecting Enescu. I think what she was trying to do was to tell the world that there are other composers, other Romanian composers worth listening to as well as Enescu. And it came out rather, unfortunately as though she was in some way disrespecting him. Here is a statue to Enesco in front of the National Opera House in Bucharest. So he was an incredible child prodigy. I mean, how old is he in this picture. I don’t know four or five years old. Hardly bigger than his violin. And at the age of seven, he was the youngest student ever taken on by the Vienna Conservatory beat, Fritz Kreisler by a few months.

They were both seven years old when they were taken on. And he graduated from the Vienna Conservatory at the age of 12. And then he moved on to Paris and I think this where he entered the conservatory. And he studied composition under . This is interesting because Vienna was a very different musical world from Paris. And you could say that the musical world in 1900 in the early 1900s, there was a sort of Astro German camp and there was a Franco Russian camp and I think he belongs to the latter rather than the former. So he had his first great success as a composer with two fairly short orchestral pieces. His Romanian Rhapsodies number one and number two composed in 1901. And it’s the first of these which has remained his most popular work. It’s the one you are quite likely to hear on a concert programme. It’s an incredibly delightful, attractive piece as you’ll hear. It makes use of traditional Romanian folk melodies. A lot of composers doing this at this time. Think Bartok and Kodai in Hungary and Vaughn Williams and Delius in England. They were going out with little primitive recording equipment recording peasants their songs and incorporating these melodies into their work. So here’s the opening of the popular and delightful first Romanian Rhapsody by George Enescu. He wrote a great deal of chamber music. And my next excerpt to play you is, again, it’s probably most his frequently performed piece of chamber music. It’s his third violin sonata, which was composed much later in 1926. And you’ll hear it’s a much more sophisticated and advanced musical language, harmonic language, but still with a decidedly Romanian flavour to it.

In fact, he subtitled this piece in the Romanian popular character. And it’s played here as you see on the screen by Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin. And I’ll tell you more later about his very close working relationship with Yehudi Menuhin. Wonderfully wistful music. He wrote one opera. It’s an enormous epic piece on theme of the Greek myth of Oedipus. And it was premiered in Paris. And this poster is quite exciting to me. As you know, I love historic recordings. And there are some really wonderful singers who took part in the premiere, including the wonderful Bass baritone, in the title role of Oedipus. And it was a critical success but never really took off and became part of the standard operatic repertoire. Actually took until 2016 to be performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. And history kind of repeated itself in that it got rave reviews. All the critics said, this is a masterpiece. This is a most extraordinary work. But of course that was it. Covent Garden haven’t brought it back again. So who knows whether I have another chance to hear it live in my lifetime. But I had a very interesting insight into the reaction of the Covent Garden Orchestra to this piece. When I go with very often to the Royal Opera House with a friend who was married to a very famous trombonist, really the leading trombonist of Britain. So we always meet up with the trombone section of the orchestra in the interval. And they were just raving about it. They were so excited. They said that this was the most thrilling, challenging exciting score that they played in years. So I’m going to play you the opening, very dark brooding opening. And towards the end of the excerpt, I’m going to play you straight away. I think you’ll hear why the trombonist got so excited.

They have very interesting things to do. Wonderful glissando sliding effects that you can do on a trombone. This was wonderful, very exciting visually as well. It was a really magnificent performance. This is how it looked at Covent Garden in 2016. And here is the prelude to the first act. He was also renowned as a conductor on both sides of the Atlantic. He was even briefly considered as a successor to Toscanini with New York Philharmonic. And he was always greeted with critical reverence wherever he performed. So I’ve got an excerpt now from a live performance given in London just after the second World War of the Bark B minor mass. And this is a duet from the Bark B minor mass with Kathleen Ferrier and Suzanne Danco. As I said, he was a great teacher of many many famous fathers, but particularly of Yehudi Menuhin. Yehudi Menuhin of course was American. But he came to Europe with his father when he was still quite a small child, I think about eight or nine years old. And his father took him to a concert in Paris with Enescu. And Menuhin said he knew straight away this was the only teacher for him. This was how he wanted to play. There was a problem because Enescu was on a tour and he was leaving Paris the following morning. But the Menuhin’s went round before breakfast and knocked on his door and pleaded with him and said, please, please would would he listen to the young Yehudi? And he did. And he agreed to take him on as a teacher. And this was actually the most important musical relationship in Menuhin’s life.

He later said that it was Enescu who gave me the light that has guided me through my entire existence. So I’m going to play you, this is one of my absolute favourite records. I love this record. I had the record, this performance on 78 when I was a child inherited from my grandparents. So I know this recording extremely, extremely well. I’ve been listening to it for the best part of, well, well over 60 years actually. So this, in fact, I’m going to play the second movement. This was a recording that came out in 1932 was made in 1932. And as you can see, it won the Grand Prix disc in 1933. And so this is the double concerto of Bark played by Yehudi Menuhin and by George Enescu together. Now, I feel that is unlike many performances of Barack music from before the war, that is a performance that has really stood the test of time, that still sounds wonderfully fresh and alert and alive. And that’s partly due of course also to the wonderful conducting of the great French Jewish conductor Pierre Monteux. So I suppose Enescu was at really the height of his career in his fame when the Second World War broke out. And he went back to Romania. But after the communist takeover he left Romania and he returned to Paris. And he was based in Paris for the rest of his life. And he’s now a permanent resident of Paris because he’s in the cemetery of Père Lachaise with his wife, the Princess Maria Cantacuzino.

It was a great tragedy after the Second World War that four of the most promising musicians who were expected to dominate musical life in the coming decades were all cut off so soon. Especially because in the case of three of them, Kathleen Ferrier, Dinu Lipatti, Jeannette Nova, the start of their international careers had been delayed by the Second World War. So we only had a very, very short period to really savour their marvellous musicianship. Kathleen Ferrier died, she aged 41 in 1953. Jeannette, you see bottom right was only 30 when she was killed in an air accident in 1949. Dinu Lipatti was 33 when he died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1950. And bottom left, Guido Cantelli everyone thought he was going to be Toscanini’s successor, including Toscanini. And that he was he died aged 36 in another air crash in 1956. Cause the time Toscanini was still alive, but very frail and nobody dared to even tell him what had happened cause they knew how upset he would be, he regarded Cantelli as his musical son. So here is the boy Dinu Lipatti, another of course very brilliant child prodigy born into a musical family. In fact, Enescu was godfather at his christening. In 1933, he took part in an international piano competition in Vienna and he was awarded second prize.

You see him here with the great French pianist, Alfred Cortot. He’s the, for many, many people, I’d say these two pianists. I mean, when pianists are asked on the radio when they’re interviewed who are the pianist you most admire, these two very often come up, particularly Cortot actually. He’s the pianist pianist. And anyway, Cortot was one of the judges on the jury. And he was so outraged that Dinu Lipatti did not win the first prize that he resigned in protest. And then he invited Lipatti to come to Paris to study with him. And he was, I would say a mentor for Lipatti rather as Enescu was for Yehudi Menuhin. So in 1935, the young Lipatti made his debut, his debut concert in Paris. The very first thing that he played was the Myra Hess arrangement of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Of course, he couldn’t know that it would also be the very last thing that he would ever play in public. And I will finish with that at the end of this talk. So what is so very, very special about Lipatti. It’s very hard to define. I think it’s a kind of spiritual quality. It’s an inner tranquillity that gives his playing an extraordinary poise. And so my next episode is a bach chorale a rage for piano that I think demonstrates this sense of inner calm and poise. Another quality he has that I think he shares with Cortot is the ability to make the piano sing. The piano is essentially a percussive instrument. The sounds are made by a hammer striking a string. So it’s a great gift to be able to produce a beautiful singing legato tone on the piano. And we hear it in this impromptu by Schubert. You certainly had a virtuous technique but he’s not the kind of pianist who shows off his virtuosity. Virtuosity isn’t his primary aim. Cause virtuosity, technical virtuosity in a way has become a somewhat discredited currency amongst pianists in recent years. That each new young pianist who comes along seems to be able to pay faster, more brilliantly, more accurately than the last.

And of course, one of the great show pieces for any pianist who really wants to show off how many notes they can get in per second is the so-called . Actually, I think it’s impossible that it could be played in a minute. It should take a minute and a half really. And I’m going to play it to you with Lipatti. And this is probably not the first fastest version you ever heard. Certainly you Yuja Wang plays it definitely quite a bit faster than he does. But what can I say? It’s just perfection. Just as his career was beginning to take off he fell sick with Hodgkin’s disease. Fellow musicians including Yehudi Menuhin club together to pay for an extremely expensive new experimental treatment with cortisone. And it did seem to work for a while. It gave him a year or so more of life. And we must be grateful for that because there there is such a small number of recordings by Lipatti and many were made in this last period of his life. So I’m going to play you next, the slow movement, very famous slow movement, I’m sure you all know it from the Mozart piano Concerto number 21. And this is a live recording from the Lucerne Festival. And this was the very last concert that Lipatti ever made with an orchestra conducted by Karajan. In that wonderful singing tone. The very last concert he gave was in the autumn of 1950 and that was a solo piano recital in Besancon. And he was already very, very weak. And the programme was simply too much for him in the second half. And he had to break off the intended programme and instead he ended with the piece with which he began his career, the Myra Hess arrangement of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Sorry, I didn’t get that. Let me see.

Q&A and Comments:

It said that after Menuhin had taken lessons with an Enescu, Menuhin lost something of his natural ability. I don’t agree with that. No, I don’t agree with that. Of course, there was a falling off in Menuhin’s technique, but that was a long, long time later, long after his lessons with an Enescu. So no, I totally disagree with that.

It’s the first Romanian Rhapsody by Enescu. Thank you.

No, it was very spectacular, Margaret. If they provide that production, do go and see it. They were all actually live members of the chorus. It was pretty impressive.

Q: Is there a film recording of the 216?

A: That I don’t know. I think it’s quite lightly. I hope there is actually, yes. Usually for production as spectacular as that there is a video.

This is Judith. She’s saying it was done at the Enescu Festival in concert in 2015 with Yurovsky. I think Enescu was actually in Romania during the war. Lipatti was in Switzerland during the war. Yes the bach is just so wonderful. It’s beyond words really, isn’t it?

This is Barbara. She said there’s a bursary in her name. One of the recipients was Romanian pianist, Alexandra Dariescu. She now performs internationally, yes, as I’ve heard wonderful things about her that she is supposed to be really extraordinary and a very nice woman, I hear from people who know her.

No, Menuhin got lessons from Enescu in Paris. Bach Double Violin Concerto is such a wonderful piece isn’t it? So your father met Menuhin after winning first prize in the Doctor’s hobbies exhibition in London. Oh, very nice.

Yes, you’d think they would have, Luna says you’d think they would’ve given him a violin more appropriate to his size. Yes, that’s true. Yehudi Menuhin was initially taught by… Well, Persinger actually, first of all refused to teach him and then did teach him. But it was Enescu, and I was trying to check, I think it’s around nine years old Enescu took him on. The recording of the double Concerto was made when he was 16.

This is Miriam Bloom who says, her piano teacher Marcel Murosky, always talks of Cortot and Lipatti. No, Cortot was not a Nazi. Please, I want to absolutely say he was not a Nazi. He was compromised. He did agree to take on official position with the Vichy regime that was collaboration. You can’t deny that. But in his opinions, he was absolutely not a Nazi. And you need to read the autobiography of, I’m trying to think of the Jewish musician who arranged the , names slipped my mind for a moment. But he talks very, very movingly about Cortot, support for him and his absolute abhorrence of Nazi antisemitism.

Thank you for the website. And the Schubert certainly is divine. And it’s also perfect, so natural, so easy sounding, isn’t it?

Q: Do you think that one day human pianists could become redundant?

A: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s possible.

This is Herbert saying that Angela, Angela and Robert Elan were just married. Yeah, they were not popular, you know. Either at the, there were lots of, I won’t repeat them, but rather nasty nicknames that they were given backstage at the Met and at Covent Garden.

Interesting, David says that cortisone is still part of the treatment of Hodgkin’s disease.

Lorna liking the three bark pieces. And Ferrier, cause I remember when I was a child everybody was talking about Kathleen Ferrier. I mean, the whole nation really mourned her. I’m not sure if I know the difference between Hodgkins and Leukaemia. I know I’ve read in the past that he died of leukaemia but it seems to be now said everywhere that it was Hodgkins that he died of. Yes, it’s often known as the Elvira Madigan concerto, isn’t it? Cause it was used in that film. A lecture on Russian pianists. I did talk about Russian in that Russian series. I did talk about some Russian pianists, so I don’t think I’ll repeat that very soon.

Enescu is not Enesco, no. In French, of course, all those Romanian names end with an O instead of with a U.

Thank you very much Margaret. Mara Hesh, one of my greatest heroines. I do wish I’d known her. I’d love to have met her. She’s such a wonderful woman.

This Barbara loves, also it’s a Pelman another wonderful musician, Radu Lupu, another very great wonderful with some of the same qualities I would say. I heard him once at a private concert and that was a great privilege. I don’t know .

Oh yes, I know, I love that joke. But apparently it’s not a joke. Apparently somebody really wrote it. That bach had 21 children and practised on a spinster in the attic, confusing, of course, him with Handel who used to practise on a spinet in the attic.

Menuhin, yes, very, very. Well, I think he’s probably, who’s to judge these people. I think probably as a husband and father Menuhin was a bit dysfunctional and certainly his son is very strange indeed. Thank you. Hodgkins is the type of leukaemia.

Thank you all for your very interesting comments. I love getting the comments at the end. And I’ll be onto more Romanians in Paris on a week today.