Radu Lupu Album Review: The Unreleased Recordings – Vault Treasures A Wonderful Surprise | classical music

FFirst, a personal statement. Of the hundreds of pianists I have heard in over 50 years of playing, a large number that includes many of the greatest names of the 20th century, none have given me more consistent pleasure or a greater sense of wonder than Rado Lupo. If the pianist’s appearance, especially in his later years, belied the character of his playing, it was Lobo: that serious, bushy-bearded figure who leaned over the keyboard in a manner more appropriate to a séance than a concert could produce playing of such velvety tonal beauty that it was extraordinary enough; That such a beguiling sound world was allied with a mind of such penetrating musical intelligence sometimes seems a miracle.

Lobo died in 2022, at the age of 76. He had retired from the concert platform three years earlier, and had stopped making studio recordings a few years before that. Decca, who recorded exclusively for him for over two decades, released his complete discography in 2015, and with such an extensive box set, one would think the legacy would be complete. But now, on the occasion of the pianist’s 80th birthday, the company has produced this wonderful surprise: six discs of unreleased studio sessions and BBC, Dutch and SWR radio tapes, dating between 1970 and 2002, of works not recorded by Lobo.

The suite opens with Mozart’s G minor and E flat piano quartets, which the members of the Tel Aviv String Quartet shared in 1976 with Lobo, in performances of such original studio quality – Lobo at his inner most in the slow movements, so dazzlingly flourishing in the finals – that it is puzzling that they have not been released before. A 1990s disc of Schubert sonatas – the unfinished C major D840, and D major D850 (in a surprisingly downbeat, almost angry performance) – complements the Schubert Lupo already in the catalogue, while a series of Haydn and Mozart sonatas from the 1970s and 1980s end abruptly with Schumann’s Symphonic Studies, complete with five sonatas. “Posthumous” variations.

If these discs remain in somewhat familiar Lupu territory, much of the rest of the collection will not. He recorded the minor Chopin, but here is a lively and exciting (if not always technically pure) performance of the B Minor Scherzo, while Lobo learned Bartók’s Out of Doors suite specifically for the 1969 Leeds International Piano Competition, for which, half a century later, he remains the most celebrated winner. Even more unusual is the Copland Sonata, fierce and majestic, from the 1971 Aldeburgh Festival, while Mussorgsky’s Pictures at Tre Lupo makes a rare venture into Russian repertory; It came from a 1984 Dutch broadcast, and its tone was noticeably rougher, almost shrill at times. Overall, though, the recording quality serves the perfect playing well enough; Every course is a treatment.

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