Radu Lupu (30 November 1945 – 17 April 2022) was a Romanian pianist. He was widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of his time.
Born in Galați, Romania, Lupu began studying piano at the age of six. Two of his major piano teachers were Florica Musicescu (who also taught Dinu Lipatti), and Heinrich Neuhaus (who also taught Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels). From 1966 to 1969, he won three major international piano competitions: the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (1966), the George Enescu International Piano Competition (1967), and the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition (1969). These victories launched Lupu's international career, and he appeared with all of the major orchestras and at all of the major festivals and music capitals of the world.
From 1970 to 1993, Lupu made over 20 recordings for Decca Records. His solo recordings, which have received considerable acclaim, include works by Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann, including all of Beethoven's piano concertos, five piano sonatas and other solo works; the Grieg and Schumann piano concertos, as well as three major solo works of Schumann; nine piano sonatas, Impromptus and Moments musicaux of Schubert; various major solo works and the first piano concerto of Brahms; and two piano concertos of Mozart. His chamber music recordings for Decca include all of Mozart's sonatas for violin and piano with Szymon Goldberg; the violin sonatas of Debussy and Franck with Kyung Wha Chung; and various works by Schubert for violin and piano with Goldberg. He additionally recorded works of Mozart and Schubert for piano four-hands and two pianos with Murray Perahia for CBS Masterworks, Schubert songs with Barbara Hendricks for EMI, and works by Schubert for piano four-hands with Daniel Barenboim for Teldec. In addition, Lupu is also noted for his performances of Bartók, Debussy, Enescu, and Janáček, among other composers.
Lupu was nominated for two Grammy Awards, winning one in 1996 for an album of two Schubert piano sonatas. In 1995, Lupu also won an Edison Award for a disc of three major piano works of Schumann. Other awards won by Lupu include the Franco Abbiati Prize in 1989 and 2006, and the 2006 Premio Internazionale Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli award.
Lupu was born in Galați, Romania on 30 November 1945 to a Jewish family, the son of Meyer Lupu, an attorney, and Ana Gabor, a linguist. From his earliest days, Lupu "had always expressed himself by singing", and was given his first piano at the age of five. He began piano studies in 1951, as a six-year-old, with Lia Busuioceanu. He made his public debut in 1957, at age 12, in a concert featuring his own compositions. He told The Christian Science Monitor in 1970 that "from the very beginning I regarded myself as a composer. I was sure, and everybody else was sure, that one day I would become a famous composer". He gave up composing about four years later, saying that he thought he would be "much better as a pianist".
After completing high school in Galați, and graduating from the Popular School for the Arts in Brașov, where he studied harmony and counterpoint with Victor Bickerich, Lupu continued his piano studies at the Bucharest Conservatory (1959–1961) with Florica Musicescu (who also taught Dinu Lipatti) and Cella Delavrancea, while also studying composition with Dragos Alexandrescu. At age 16, in 1961, he was awarded a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied for seven years. In Moscow, he first studied with Galina Eguiazarova (a pupil of Aleksandr Goldenweiser) for two years, then with Heinrich Neuhaus (who also taught Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels) and finally with his son, Stanislav Neuhaus. He graduated in 1969. Lupu was also a student of Maria Curcio, a student of Artur Schnabel.
In a 1981 interview, when asked about what types of influences his teachers had on him, Lupu answered that he thought of himself as more autodidactic: "My first teacher took me to every orchestral concert, and I am also grateful for what I learned in Moscow, but I think of myself, basically (in music anyway), as somebody who is more autodidactic. I took some from Furtwängler, Toscanini, everywhere ... more and more so since I left Moscow."
In 1965, Lupu was placed fifth at the International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna.
The following year, he won the first prize in the second Van Cliburn International Piano Competition; he also won special prizes for the best performance of a commissioned work (of Willard Straight's "Structure for Piano") and the best performance of a movement from the Aaron Copland Piano Sonata. In the finals, his performance of the first movement of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 (Op. 16), a required piece, was described by Paul Hume of The Washington Post as "the most fiery and thunderous of any of the six finalists". In addition to the Prokofiev, he performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 (Op. 73). Alicia de Larrocha, who was on the jury, declared Lupu a genius. "I did not expect it at all. I am just speechless," Lupu said after his victory. Shortly after the competition, in April 1967, Lupu made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City in a program of Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. However, Lupu reportedly turned down many of the other engagements that came with the prize, instead choosing to further his studies in Moscow.
A year after his Cliburn Competition victory, in 1967, Lupu won the first prize in the George Enescu International Piano Competition. Two years later, in October 1969, he won the Leeds International Piano Competition; he performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Groves (Op. 37) in the final. The following month, in November 1969, Lupu made his solo debut in London; Joan Chissell of The Times wrote about his performance of the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 7 at the recital: "He brought what seemed like a lifetime's experience to its alternating desolation and pride. Never could music come nearer to speech."
In April 1970, Lupu made his first recording for Decca Records: Brahms' Rhapsody in B minor (Op. 79 No. 1) and Three Intermezzi (Op. 117), and Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor (D. 784). He continued to record for the label for the following 23 years. In August 1970, the 24-year-old pianist made his debut at The Proms, performing Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 (Op. 15) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart at the Royal Albert Hall. In November 1970, he made his first concerto recording for Decca, of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster; he also recorded Beethoven's 32 Variations in C minor (WoO 80).
Lupu's first major American appearances after his Leeds Competition victory were in February 1972 with the Cleveland Orchestra in the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with Daniel Barenboim conducting at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and in October 1972 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 with Carlo Maria Giulini conducting.
The performance of the Brahms with the Cleveland Orchestra and Barenboim was reviewed by Harold C. Schonberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for The New York Times who had ten years prior notably lambasted the famous New York Philharmonic concert of 6 April 1962 where the same concerto was played by Glenn Gould with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Schonberg was also critical of the performance by Lupu and Barenboim, writing that not since the Bernstein–Gould performance "had there been such an interpretation" of the concerto, describing it as "willful, episodic and mannered, self-indulgent, capricious". However, he added that "yet through all the eccentricities came the feeling of two young musicians trying hard to get out of the rut and once in a while actually succeeding", but that "in future years this kind of approach may jell for them. Right now it does not come off."