Franz Schubert - Fantasie in C Major for Violin and Piano, D. 934 (op. posth. 159), Szymon Goldberg (violin), Radu Lupu (piano)
I Andante molto - 00:00
II Allegretto - 03:30 ----
III Andantino - 08:47 ----
IV Tempo Primo - Allegro Vivace - Allegretto - Presto - 19:02
Rest in peace, Radu Lupu.
Radu Lupu (30 November 1945 - 17 April 2022) was a Romanian pianist firmly established as one of the most important musicians of his generation. He was widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of his time.
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. In 2016 was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to music.
Lupu's playing garnered admiration not only from music critics, but also by fellow major artists. Mitsuko Uchida told Humphrey Burton in a 2002 BBC Radio 3 interview that "there is nobody on earth who can actually get certain range of colour, and also the control - don't underestimate this unbelievable control of his playing." Nikolai Lugansky said in an interview that Lupu "possesses the rare power of letting the music speak for itself", and András Schiff stated that Lupu had the "rare gift to illuminate anything that he plays with rare musical intelligence". In addition, the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin cited Lupu as an inspiration while he was a piano student, saying that listening to recitals and recordings by Lupu "shaped my conception of sound from a very young age", and the cellist Steven Isserlis called him "one of the greatest artists I have ever heard or known"
In 2019, Radu Lupu officially retired from doing public performances as he has been canceling many engagements due to his medical condition.
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Franz Schubert composed his Fantasy in C major for violin and piano, Op. posth. 159, D 934, in December 1827. It was the last of his compositions for violin and piano, and was premiered in January 1828 by the violinist Josef Slavik and the pianist Carl Maria von Bocklet at the Landhaussaal in Vienna.
The difficult work was "calculated to display Slavík's virtuoso violin technique" and is demanding for both instruments. According to pianist Nikolai Lugansky, the Fantasy "is the most difficult music ever written for the piano", and "more difficult than all of Rachmaninov’s piano concertos put together".
While musical connoisseurs have long regarded it as a masterpiece, it has never become a popular work. Nor was it in Schubert's day. Indeed, it all but emptied Vienna's Landhaussaal on the occasion of its first performance. As one critic put it, "the Fantasy occupied rather too much of the time a Viennese is prepared to devote to pleasures of the mind. The hall gradually emptied, and the writer confesses that he too is unable to say anything about the conclusion of this work."