(Decca, six CDs)
This six-disc collection to mark the late pianist’s 80th birthday is full of treats and includes rare ventures into Chopin and Copland, along with Lupu’s legendary rendition of Bartók at Leeds in 1969
First, a personal declaration. Of the many hundreds of pianists I must have heard in more than 50 years of recital going, a multitude that has included many of the greatest names of the 20th century, none gave me more consistent pleasure or a greater sense of wonder than Radu Lupu. If ever a pianist’s appearance, especially in his later years, belied the character of his playing it was Lupu: that the intensely serious, heavily bearded figure who hunched over the keyboard in a way more appropriate to a seance than a recital could produce playing of such velvety tonal beauty was extraordinary enough; that such a beguiling sound world was allied to a mind of such penetrating musical intelligence sometimes seemed miraculous.
Lupu died in 2022, at the age of 76. He had retired from the concert platform three years before, and had ceased to make studio recordings some years before that. Decca, for whom he recorded exclusively for over two decades, released his complete recordings in 2015, and with that comprehensive box, one thought, the legacy would be complete. But now, to mark what would have been the pianist’s 80th birthday, the company has produced this wonderful surprise: six discs made up of unreleased studio sessions and BBC, Dutch and SWR radio tapes, dating between 1970 and 2002, of works that Lupu otherwise did not record.
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