Radu Lupu

Radu Lupu was a Romanian and British pianist, born on 30 November 1945 in Galați and died on 17 April 2022 in Lausanne. He was born into a Jewish family: his father, Meier Lupu, was a lawyer, and his mother, Ana Gabor, was a philologist.

He began playing the piano at the age of six and gave his first public concert at twelve. After graduating from an art school in Brașov, he entered the Bucharest Conservatory, where he studied in the class of Florica Musicescu. In 1961 he continued his education at the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Heinrich Neuhaus and Stanislav Neuhaus.

From 1969 he lived in London, and his career developed internationally. He became especially admired for interpretations of Mozart, the European Romantic repertory from Beethoven and Schubert to Grieg and Brahms, as well as works by Debussy, Janáček, and Bartók. He also performed with artists such as Barbara Hendricks, Daniel Barenboim, and Murray Perahia.

Lupu won first prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1966, first prize at the George Enescu International Festival in 1969, and first prize at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 1969. His later distinctions included the Edison Award in 1995, a Grammy Award in 1996, and the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Award in 2006. He was also inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame.

In his personal life, he married the cellist Elizabeth Wilson in 1971; she was the daughter of the British diplomat Archibald Duncan Wilson. His second marriage, from 1990 until his death, was to the violinist Delia Bugarin. He died in Lausanne in 2022.