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Magazin der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien
Mai/Juni 2006
The Shaman
Radu Lupu
To see the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu in profound concentration on the podium, for all the
world like an erratic carving, one cannot avoid thinking of the words of the legendary jazz
pianist Thelonious Monk, “Sitting at the piano, it’s always winter”.
It doesn’t take much imagination either to recall another pianist in his sixties, grey-haired and
bearded, short and heavy-set, sitting on the piano stool with his hands outstretched: Johannes
Brahms in a famous portrait by Willy von Beckeraths.
This comparison isn’t without reason. Lupu, like Brahms before him, is an artist with no time
for unimportant things and who in this sense makes “serious” music. Similarities continue with
the fact that Lupu saw himself in the first instance as a composer, whose first public
performance at the age of 12 saw him play exclusively works he himself had composed.
However, he took part as a performer in important competitions in the 1960s (including the Van
Cliburn and George Enescu competitions) and carried away first prize.
One hundred times reconsidered
Lupu certainly never chose an easy path. Born in Galati on 30 November 1945, Lupu took
lessons with Florica Muzicescu, who had already taught the iconic Romanian pianist Dinu
Lipatti, and went thereafter on a scholarship to Moscow, where he flourished under Heinrich
Neuhaus at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. Neuhaus had taught Sviatoslav Richter, though
there were many other reasons for his renown as a teacher. Neuhaus showed Lupu the
importance of remaining true to the text, and of giving scrupulous attention to the score. It
seems therefore unsurprising that both Richter and Lupu display both stoicism and humility as
performers. Both often give the impression of disappearing behind the work itself.
Lupu buries himself, so to speak, in the music, rather than developing a particularly warm
relationship with his audience. We experience someone who submits himself without
pretention and out of a sense of selfless responsibility to the music and its requirements upon
him as a performer. It is therefore no wonder that Lupu’s image is partly that of a shaman and
partly a sufferer for his art as a pianist. When he plays a note, he means it to be exactly so, as
the result of something weighed up one hundred times over. There is no attempt here to use a
celebrated sensibility in a calculated way – Lupus is an anti-star through and through.
Conscious unconscious
Lupu spent long working on the balance between intuition and intellect, until Arnold
Schönberg’s "Grundlagen der musikalischen Komposition" (1948) brought him closer to the
answer. While the young Lupu was still subject to spontaneous passions, he came more and
more to relate to the works themselves rather than to becoming the composer he had originally
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Magazin der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien
Mai/Juni 2006
wanted to be. This transition brought with it an answer to some of his questions relating to
playing techniques. We can imagine it thus: Lupu attempts to forget all conscious
understanding in the act of recreating a work through performance, in order to retain a feeling
of spontaneity in parallel to the analytical aspects, a form of conscious unconscious paradox
which nonetheless makes perfect sense.
The search for the innermost qualities of the note and the larger musical associations, as well
as the parallels to Richter, show up particularly strongly in performances of Schubert’s last
sonata (B major, D 960). Richter’s rendition is renowned above all for the slow tempi of the
first movement: molto moderato. He took the word “molto” more literally than any other
performer before. The musical near-paralysis was broken only by the grimness of the trilled
base notes. Lupu made a similar attempt during the Salzburger Festspiele in 1996. The first
bars proceeded at half-speed, making the “most fearsome trills in the history of music” (Valery
Afanassiev) all the more terrifying, as if sounding from the abyss.
Mutual attraction
What Radu Lupu himself has to say about the ritual of the solo concert and the mechanisms of
the music industry we may only guess, since he gives barely any interviews. In any case, he
appears to feel that it is simply inappropriate to express oneself in words when it comes to
music. Richter too only emerged from his own reticence shortly before his death. In contrast to
Richter, however, Lupu’s repertoire has remained relatively restricted.
Given the impossibility of producing definitive renditions of all musical styles, Lupu remarked in
the 1980s to the London founder of the European Piano Teachers’ Association, Carola
Grindea that he could “only perform works by those composers to which I am suited, or more
accurately, which like me best”. It should become clear that his preference for the classics of
the piano literature is based on mutual attraction. In particular, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, Schumann and Brahms exert an enormous fascination upon him. To extend the
metaphor, Lupu in no sense smothers his friends with his attentions, but rather offers himself
as a medium through which they may find voice. This suits both of them.
Eminent mixer of timbres
Brahms is the key: After Lupus’ last official studio recording made in 1995 was published,
audiences have had to be satisfied with existing recordings or indeed with concert
appearances.
This leads us to the reissuing of truly enthralling interpretations of Brahms, which exemplify
Lupus’ qualities as a performer. In the impelling cadences of the two rhapsodies such as
op.79, the stirringly romantic wonderwork, Lupu never loses track, while demonstrating how to
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Magazin der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien
Mai/Juni 2006
create a vast maelstrom through the use of intelligently-calibrated performance. Lupu thus
shows himself once again to be an eminent mixer of timbres.
Since we are now in Mozart Year, his rendition of the entire violin sonatas, a performance of
absolute humility, with the violinist Szymon Goldberg, should be mentioned. In addition,
Beethoven’s five piano concertos performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under
Zubin Mehta are available in a recording that is certainly worth listening to.
Triads on the High wire
Lupu’s closest friends include Murray Perahia and Daniel Barenboim. With the latter, he
recently performed Mozart’s double concerto in E flat major. The performance met with critical
acclaim: “The sound is neither too lush nor too perfumed, nor is the baroque pomp too
majestic, yet the phrasing is neither too cool nor too stiff although it retains a continual pulse.
The couples revolve through the festively decked ballroom, while Mozart offsets the weight of
the brocade costumes, and the triads take a walk together on the high wire.”
Lupu, who has made London his home since the 1960s, has made only rare appearances in
recent years. Yet, when he returned to the stage as a solo performer after a long abstinence at
a London gala last summer (replacing a sick Murray Perahia), the reaction was entirely
positive. Lupu seems to have regained a taste for performance, and thus Vienna’s music
lovers have the chance once again to encounter one of the most complex of all contemporary
pianists.
Wolfgang Schaufler
Wolfgang Schaufler is New Music specialist at mica – music information center austria.
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