Bach Partita BWV 825: Menuets 1 & 2
Chosen Instrument of God: Dinu Lipatti
"A chosen instrument lent to the world by God for too brief space" was how Lipatti, born in Bucharest on March 19, 1917, was once described by the man responsible for all his Columbia recordings, the late Walter Legge. The phrase grew from Lipatti's own remark as he listened Beethoven's F minor quartet shortly before he died; " to write music like that you must be a chosen instrument of God". The date was December 2, 1950, when after a miraculous summer's reprieve resulting from injections of the newly discovered drug, cortisone (whose heavy costs were met by devoted friends including Menuhin, Charle Muench and Stravinsky), the leukaemia overshadowing the last six of his thirty-three years finally struck him down.
Piano: Dinu Lipatti (1917 - 1950)
Recorded: in July, 1950
Though frailty of health prevented far-flung tours, concerts in Switzerland, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland and Italy found him increasingly recognised as a "chosen" artist by reason of an inner spiritual grace illuminating his every finely controlled feat of finger, every variation of touch, every subtle nuance of color. No-one more consciously analyzed, dissected, indeed prepared, whatever he undertook. Yet always his playing had the limpid freshness and radiance of an early morning in Spring. To a younger generation never privileged to have heard him on the platform, this recital will help to explain why his name is now legendary.