Trois Sonates de Scarlatti for Oboe, Clarinet, and Bassoon B.34

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Dinu Lipatti refined his writing for wind instruments through a series of compositions influenced by his mentors Mihail Jora and Nadia Boulanger, as well as fellow students like Igor Markevitch and Jean Françaix. Sensitive to a particular sonic “atmosphere,” Lipatti also drew inspiration from Enescu’s works, notably the Dixtuor op.14. Despite a limited output, he devoted a significant portion of his work to wind instruments, creating original pieces and arrangements that synthesize Romanian folklore with the modernist influences of Bartók and Stravinsky.

His arrangements of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas played a formative role, following the Baroque tradition of transcription as a method of learning and timbral exploration. Scarlatti’s sonatas were a staple in Lipatti’s piano repertoire, and some of his recordings were recently restored and released. His transcriptions for wind trio and quintet served not only as orchestration exercises but also as a deep dive into instrumental characteristics. The first performance of these works took place in 1940 during a radio concert conducted by Lipatti himself, and they were later presented in Paris.