Perhaps it's only fair to start by passing on Dr Marc Gertsch's warning in the booklet that these are ''amateur recordings''. As he puts it, ''this explains the technical quality, which is not up to modem standards''. The miracle of it all is how quickly the quality of the playing itself puts all such reproductive considerations—like the surface hiss in the slow movement of the Bach and imperfect balance in the Chopin (particularly in the deteriorating finale)—out of your mind. Miraculous is certainly not too extravagant a word for Lipatti himself, who by October 1947, at 30, was already grievously ill, with only another three years to live.
His choice of Busoni's arrangement of the Bach concerto, with its frequent recourse to higher registers and its occasional amplifications, will of course not please everyone: Dr Gertsch suggests that it might have been the size of the Concertgebouw that drew him to its ''richer sound volume''. I think it also pertinent to remember that Lipatti often warned his own students against too pedagogic an allegiance to period style, on the grounds that ''great and true music transcends its time'' and that 'Ur-spirit' was no less important than 'Ur-text'. What we get here is certainly not harpsichord-confined Bach. But thanks to the incisive precision of his articulation and rhythm, his crystalline texture and sharp-cut tonal contrasts, I still think the faster flanking movements supremely stylish. In the laden Adagio I marvel at the profundity of feeling he conveys with such simplicity.
After the Czerny-Stefanska LP recording of Chopin's E minor Concerto once attributed to Lipatti (now withdrawn by EMI) it's good to know that this one has been officially authenticated. It certainly has all the spontaneity and vitality of a live performance, with a full-heartedness all its own as if in awareness that it could well prove his last. Ackermann's slow tempo for the (curtailed) opening ritornello heralds some quite extreme fluctuations of pulse in the first movement's course. Yet Lipatti manages them with such artistry that the argument never sounds episodic. Even imperfectly reproduced, his luminous cantabile is as much a joy as his delicacy and finesse in faster flights. And how refreshing to hear the finale's teasing done without self-consciously inserted rubato. With every note in the work experienced as fully and richly as here, you marvel anew that Chopin was a mere youth of 20 when he wrote it.
The disc is completed by the three subtly contrasted Chopin miniatures with which Lipatti was unusually (in this subscription series) invited to open the second half of the concert—a concert which, in the words of one critic present, could have been repeated three times and still would not have been enough.'