19 March] 1917 – 2 December 1950) was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was cut short by his death from effects related to Hodgkin's disease at age 33.

In his short lifetime he was highly acclaimed by many musical figures of the 20th century, namely Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Cortot, Nadia Boulanger, and Francis Poulenc.

[1] Constantin Lipatti (from childhood called by the diminutive "Dinu") was born in Bucharest into a musical family: his father was a violinist who had studied with Pablo de Sarasate and Carl Flesch,[2] his mother a pianist.

For his baptism, which occurred not shortly after birth as is usual, but when he was old enough to play the piano, the violinist and composer George Enescu agreed to be his godfather.

[2] In June 1930, the best pupils at the Conservatoire gave a concert at the Bucharest Opera, and the 13-year-old Lipatti received a huge ovation for his performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor.

On 17 May 1935, three days before the concert, his friend and teacher, Paul Dukas, died and in his memory Lipatti opened his program with J. S. Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring in the transcription by Myra Hess,[2] the first piece he publicly performed as an adult pianist.

Although he gave concerts across the Nazi-occupied territories, as the war grew closer he fled his native Romania in September 1943 with his companion and fellow pianist, Madeleine Cantacuzene.

2 in A-flat, he found he was too exhausted to play it and he offered instead Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, the piece with which he had begun his professional career only fifteen years before.

[citation needed] Lipatti's piano playing is widely appreciated for the absolute purity of his interpretations, at the service of which he used a masterful pianistic technique.

Lipatti is particularly noted for his interpretations of Chopin, Mozart and Bach, and he also made recordings of Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso, Liszt, Enescu, and the Schumann and Grieg piano concertos.

In 1981, it emerged that the soloist on this recording was in fact a Polish pianist (and a fellow Cortot pupil), Halina Czerny-Stefańska, the joint winner of the 4th International Chopin Piano Competition, playing with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Václav Smetáček.

"[10] In recognition of his outstanding contributions to classical music interpretation and composition he was posthumously elected in 1997 as a member of the Romanian Academy.