(born March 20, 1915, Zhitomir, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died Aug. 1, 1997, Moscow, Russia) Ukrainian pianist of German descent. He became accompanist to the Odessa Opera at age 15 and began conducting there at 18. In 1949, two years after he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, he won the Stalin Prize. He toured Europe, China, Japan, and the U.S., becoming legendary for the powerful technique and fiery energy in his solo performances. Highly regarded as an accompanist and chamber player as well, he made celebrated trio recordings with Mstislav Rostropovich and David Oistrakh.
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Biography
Richter was born in Zhytomyr, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to a German expatriate father and a Russian mother. He grew up in Odessa. Unusually, he was largely self-taught although his father who was a pianist and organist, and one of his father's pupils, a Czech harpist, provided him with a basic education in music. Even at an early age, Richter was an excellent sight-reader, and regularly practiced with local opera and ballet companies. He developed a lifelong passion for opera, vocal and chamber music that found its full expression in the festivals he established in Grange de Meslay, France, and in Moscow, at the Pushkin Museum. He started to work at the Odessa Opera where he accompanied the rehearsals.Early career
On March 19, 1934, Richter gave his first recital, at the engineers' club of Odessa; but he did not formally start studying piano until three years later, when he decided to seek Heinrich Neuhaus, a famous pianist and piano teacher, at the Moscow Conservatory. During Richter's audition for Neuhaus, Neuhaus apparently whispered to a fellow student "this man's a genius". Although Neuhaus taught many great pianists, including Emil Gilels and Radu Lupu, it is said that he considered Richter to be "the genius pupil, for whom he had been waiting all his life", while acknowledging that he taught Richter almost "nothing".Early in his career, Richter also tried his hand at composing, and it even appears that he played some of his compositions during his audition for Neuhaus. He gave up composition shortly after moving to Moscow. Years later, Richter explained this decision as follows: "Perhaps the best way I can put it is that I see no point in adding to all the bad music in the world".
Behind the Iron Curtain
Richter was gay, and while his sexual orientation was an open secret in the Soviet musical world, homosexual behavior was illegal and punishable by what Benjamin Ivry calls "draconian" Soviet law. This conflict contributed to Richter's tendency to be private and withdrawn. Richter was not open to interviews and never publicly discussed his personal life.In 1945, Richter met and accompanied in recital the soprano Nina Dorliak, who was ten years his senior. Richter and Dorliak thereafter remained companions until her death, although they never legally married. She provided not only a "social front" for his sexual orientation, as Ivry writes, but also a practical counterbalance to his impulsive nature. She would wind his watch for him, remind him of appointments, and manage his professional commitments.
In 1949 he won the Stalin Prize, which led to extensive concert tours in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. Richter gave his first concerts outside the Soviet union in Czechoslovakia in 1950. In 1952, Richter was invited to play Franz Liszt in the all-Russian remake of the 1946 Glinka movie, also Russian, of the life of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, called Kompozitor Glinka (Russian: Композитор Глинка, "Glinka The Composer"). The title role was played by Boris Smirnov.
In 1960, even though he had a reputation for being "indifferent" to politics, Richter defied the authorities when he performed at Boris Pasternak's funeral. (He had played Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 at Joseph Stalin's funeral in 1953, with David Oistrakh.)
Sviatoslav Richter (who had received the Stalin and Lenin prizes and became People's Artist of the RSFSR), gave his first tour concerts in the USA in 1960 in England and France in 1961 .
Tour in the West
The West first became aware of Richter through recordings made in the 1950s. One of Richter's first advocates in the West was Emil Gilels, who stated during his first tour of the United States that the critics (who were giving Gilels rave reviews) should "wait until you hear Richter."Richter's first concerts in the West took place in May 1960, when he was allowed to play in Finland, and on October 15, 1960, in Chicago, where he played Johannes Brahms's Second Piano Concerto accompanied by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Erich Leinsdorf, creating a sensation. In a review, noted music Chicago Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy, who was known for her unkind reviews of established artists, recalled Richter first walking on stage hesitantly, looking vulnerable (as if about to be "devoured"), but then sitting at the piano and dispatching "the performance of a lifetime". Richter's 1960 tour of the United States culminated in a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall.
Richter, however, claimed to dislike performing in the United States. Following a 1970 incident at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, when Richter's performance alongside David Oistrakh was disrupted by anti-Soviet protests, Richter vowed never to return. Rumors of a planned return to Carnegie Hall surfaced in the last years of Richter's life, although it is not clear if there was any truth behind them.
In 1961, Richter played for the first time in London. His first recital, pairing works of Haydn and Prokofiev, was received with hostility by British critics. Notably, Neville Cardus concluded that Richter's playing was "provincial", and wondered why Richter had been invited to play in London, given that London had plenty of "second class" pianists of its own. Following a July 18, 1961 concert, where Richter performed both of Franz Liszt's piano concertos, the critics reversed course.
Later years
While he very much enjoyed performing for an audience, Richter hated planning concerts years in advance, and in later years took to playing at very short notice in small, most often darkened halls, with only a small lamp lighting the score. Richter claimed that this setting helped the audience focus on the music being performed, rather than on extraneous and irrelevant matters such as the performer's grimaces and gestures.In 1986, Richter embarked on a six-month tour of Siberia, possibly giving as many as 150 recitals, at times performing in small towns that did not even have a concert hall. It is said that after one such concert, the members of the audience who had never before heard classical music performed, gathered in the middle of the hall and started swaying from side to side to celebrate the performer. In his last years, it is said that Richter contemplated giving concerts free of charge.
An anecdote illustrates Richter's approach to performance in the last decade of his life. After reading a biography of Charlemagne (Richter was an avid reader), Richter had his secretary send a telegram to the director of the theater in Aachen, a town reputed to have been Charlemagne's birthplace, stating "The Maestro has read a biography of Charlemagne and would like to play at Aquisgrana". The performance took place shortly thereafter.
As late as 1995, Richter continued to perform some of the most demanding pieces in the pianistic repertoire, including Maurice Ravel's Miroirs cycle, Sergei Prokofiev's Second Sonata and Frederic Chopin's etudes and Fourth Ballade.
Richter's last recorded orchestral performance was of three Mozart concerti in 1994 with the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra conducted by his old friend Rudolf Barshai.
Richter's last recital was a private gathering in Lübeck, Germany, on 30 March 1995. The program consisted of two Haydn sonatas and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Beethoven, a piece for two pianos, which Richter performed with pianist Andreas Lucewicz.
Richter died at Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow from a heart attack, after he suffered from a depressed state of mind caused by his inability to perform in public. At the time of his death, Richter was rehearsing Schubert's Fünf Klavierstucke, D. 459.
Repertoire
As Richter once put it, "My repertory runs to around eighty different programs, not counting chamber works. Indeed, Richter's repertoire ranged from Handel and Bach to Karol Szymanowski, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Britten, and George Gershwin, although with many omissions such as Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's Waldstein and Moonlight sonatas and Fourth and Fifth piano concertos, Schubert's A-major sonata D. 959, Prokofiev's Third piano concerto, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3.Richter worked tirelessly to learn new pieces. For instance, in the late 1980s, Richter learned Brahms's Paganini and Handel variations and in the 1990s, he learned several of Debussy's etudes, piano concertos by Saint-Saëns, Gershwin, Mozart, as well as sonatas by Bach and Mozart which he had not previously included in his programs.
Central to his repertoire were the works of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Beethoven, J. S. Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev, Debussy and many others. He is said to have learned the second book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier by heart in one month.
He gave the premiere of Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, which he learned in four days, and No. 9, which Prokofiev dedicated to Richter. Apart from his solo career, he also performed chamber music with partners such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolf Barshai, David Oistrakh, Oleg Kagan, Yuri Bashmet, Natalia Gutman, Zoltan Kocsis, Elisabeth Leonskaya, Benjamin Britten and members of the Borodin String Quartet. Richter also often accompanied singers such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schreier, Galina Pisarenko and his long-time companion Nina Dorliak.
Richter also conducted the premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra. This was his sole appearance as a conductor. The soloist was Rostropovich, to whom the work was dedicated. Prokofiev also wrote his 1949 Cello Sonata in C for Rostropovich, and he and Richter premiered it in 1950. Richter himself was a passable cellist, and Rostropovich was a good pianist; at one concert in Moscow at which he accompanied Rostropovich on the piano, they exchanged instruments for part of the program.
Approach to performance
Richter explained his approach to performance as follows: "The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter. He doesn't add anything that isn't already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn't dominate the music, but should dissolve into it. Or, similarly: "I am not a complete idiot, but whether from weakness or laziness have no talent for thinking. I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror . . . Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.Richter's belief that musicians should "carry ... out the composer's intentions to the letter," led him to be critical of others and, most often, himself. After attending a recital of Murray Perahia, where Perahia performed Chopin's Third Piano Sonata without observing the first movement repeat, Richter asked him backstage to explain the omission. Similarly, after Richter realized that he had been playing a wrong note in Bach's Italian Concerto for decades, he insisted that the following disclaimer/apology be printed on a CD containing a performance thereof: "Just now Sviatoslav Richter realized, much to his regret, that he always made a mistake in the third measure before the end of the second part of the 'Italian Concerto'. As a matter of fact, through forty years -- and no musician or technician ever pointed it out to him -- he played 'F-sharp' rather than 'F'. The same mistake can be found in the previous recording made by Maestro Richter in the fifties."
Recordings
Despite his large discography, Richter disliked the recording process, and most of Richter's recordings originate from live performances. Thus, his live recitals from Moscow (1948), Warsaw (1954), Sofia (1958), New York (1960), Leipzig (1963), Warsaw (1972), Aldeburgh (multiple years), Prague (multiple years), Salzburg (1977) and Amsterdam (1986), are hailed as some of the finest documents of his playing, as are other myriad live recordings issued prior to and since his death on labels including Music & Arts, BBC Legends, Philips, Russian Revelation, and more recently Ankh productions.Other critically acclaimed live recordings by Richter include performances of Scriabin's selected etudes, preludes and sonatas (multiple performances, different years), Schumann's C-major Fantasy (multiple performances, different years), Beethoven's Appassionata sonata (Moscow, 1960), Schubert's B-flat sonata (multiple performances, different years), Ravel's Miroirs (Prague, 1965), Liszt's b-minor sonata (multiple performances, 1965-66), Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata (multiple performances, 1975) and selected preludes by Rachmaninoff (multiple performances, different years) and Debussy (multiple performances, different years).
However, despite his professed hatred for the studio, Richter took the recording process quite seriously. For instance, after a long recording session for Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, for which he had used a Bösendorfer piano, Richter listened to the tapes and, dissatisfied with his performance, told the recording engineer "Well, I think we'll remake it on the Steinway after all". Similarly, during a recording session for Schumann's Toccata, Richter reportedly chose to play this piece (which Schumann himself considered "among the most difficult pieces ever written" ) several times in a row, without taking any breaks, in order to preserve the spontaneity of his interpretation.
According to Falk Schwartz and John Berrie's 1983 article "Sviatoslav Richter -- A Discography", in the 1970s Richter announced his intention of recording his complete solo repertoire "on some 50 discs". This "complete" Richter project did not come to fruition, however, although twelve LPs worth of recordings were pressed between 1970 and 1973, and were subsequently re-issued (in CD format) by Olympia (various composers, 10 CDs) and RCA (Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier).
In 1961, Richter's recording with Erich Leinsdorf and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance - Concerto or Instrumental Soloist. That recording is still considered a landmark (despite Richter's claim he was dissatisfied with it), as are his studio recordings of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, Liszt's two Piano Concertos, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto and Schumann's Toccata, among many others.
Honours and awards
- Sonning Award (1986; Denmark)
- Doctor of Music, honoris causa Oxford University
Quotations
Memorable statements about Richter
The Italian critic Piero Rattalino has asserted that the only pianists comparable to Richter in the history of piano performance were Franz Liszt and Ferruccio Busoni.Glenn Gould called Richter one of "the most powerful musical communicators of our time".
Van Cliburn attended a Richter recital in 1958 in the Soviet Union. He reportedly cried during the recital and, upon returning to the United States, described Richter's playing as "the most powerful piano playing I have ever heard".
Artur Rubinstein described his first exposure to Richter as follows: "It really wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist: tears began rolling down my cheeks."
Heinrich Neuhaus described Richter as follows: "His singular ability to grasp the whole and at the same time miss none of the smallest details of a composition suggests a comparison with an eagle who from his great height can see as far as the horizon and yet single out the tiniest detail of the landscape."
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote of Richter: "Richter is an extraordinary phenomenon. The enormity of his talent staggers and enraptures. All the phenomena of musical art are accessible to him."
Vladimir Sofronitsky proclaimed that Richter was a "genius", prompting Richter to respond that Sofronitsky was a "god".
Vladimir Horowitz said: "Of the Russian pianists, I like only one, Richter"
Pierre Boulez wrote of Richter: "His personality was greater than the possibilities offered to him by the piano, broader than the very concept of complete mastery of the instrument."
Noted Gramophone critic Bryce Morrison described Richter as follows: "Idiosyncratic, plain-speaking, heroic, reserved, lyrical, virtuosic and perhaps above all, profoundly enigmatic, Sviatoslav Richter remains one of the greatest recreative artists of all time."
Memorable statements by Richter
On listening to Bach: "It does no harm to listen to Bach from time to time, even if only from a hygienic standpoint.On Scriabin: "Scriabin isn't the sort of composer whom you'd regard as your daily bread, but is a heady liqueur on which you can get drunk periodically, a poetical drug, a crystal that's easily broken.
On picking small venues for performance: "Put a small piano in a truck and drive out on country roads; take time to discover new scenery; stop in a pretty place where there is a good church; upload the piano and tell the residents; give a concert; offer flowers to the people who have been so kind as to attend; leave again.
On his plan to perform without a fee: "Music must be given to those who love it. I want to give free concerts; that's the answer.
Trivia
Richter was known for his extremely self-critical, self-demanding attitude, although he also could be quite straightforward in criticizing his colleagues. Richter had a prodigious memory, but following a couple of memory lapses in the late 1970s, he refused to perform without the score in front of him.
Richter refused to play piano transcriptions in concert, although on occasion he would perform opera transcriptions for his friends. In the 1940s, he apparently performed his own transcription of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for a group of friends in one sitting. Similarly, after being a witness at Riccardo Muti's wedding, Richter played from memory the entire first act of Puccini's Madam Butterfly for a small group of wedding guests.
He owned two Hamburg-made Steinway pianos and was also fond of Bechstein and Bösendorfer pianos. Starting at some point in the late 1970s, however, Richter began to perform on Yamaha pianos.
Richter had unusually large hands, capable of taking a twelfth. David Dubal wrote of them, "What amazing hands - they seemed to be made of marble; his fifth finger was fearsome in its physical strength.
Richter's favorite composers were Chopin, Debussy and Wagner. His favorite piano concertos were the first concerto of Beethoven and the A-minor concerto of Robert Schumann.
During the interview contained in the documentary Richter – the Enigma (1998), he claimed never to have practiced more than 2 or 3 hours a day (except when he had to learn a piece on short notice). However, his wife also said that he could practice up to 10 hours a day, labouring over details, which may reflect Richter's exceedingly self-critical nature.
Richter hated the telephone and disliked flying.
Richter was a very generous person, and would often dedicate recitals to the memory of his friends (e.g., Oleg Kagan, Heinrich Neuhaus, Artur Rubinstein, etc.). For instance, in 1992, upon learning of Marlene Dietrich's death, Richter dedicated a recital (for which he wrote the program by hand) to her memory, and sent 600 white and pink roses as sign of condolence.
Richter was most often very courteous, although his notebooks published in 2001 (in edited form) reveal that he could be frankly disapproving of some musicians’ performances.
Richter battled depression throughout his life. He was known for his exceptionally self-critical, self-demanding and straightforward attitude, although he also could be rather blunt in critically assessing his colleagues’ performances. Richter describes a younger colleague as a person who is “happy with himself nearly all the time”, adding that “he would be even happier if he were more modest”.
Born in 1915 to a father of German extraction and a Russian noble mother, Richter recounts how he told Herbert von Karajan that he (Richter) was "a German, too", and Karajan replied "then I am a Chinese". Richter commented Karajan’s reaction by saying "How do you like that?" (Karajan was of part-Greek and Slovenian descent.)
During a 1986 press conference in Russia, the older Horowitz asked whether it was true that Richter used the score when performing.
Media
Notes
References
- Monsaingeon, Bruno (2001). Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. Princeton University Press.
- Monsaingeon, Bruno (1998), Richter, the Enigma. Video interview-documentary.
- Rattalino, Piero (2005). Sviatoslav Richter. Il Visionario. Zecchini Editore.
External links
- Website dedicated to Sviatoslav Richter, includes an extensive discography
- RECORDED RICHTER, complete discography that includes currently unavailable recordings and private recordings
- Brief obituary of Nina Dorliak
- Paul Geffen, 1999: Vita of Sviatoslav Richter
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Last updated on Sunday October 05, 2008 at 00:59:40 PDT (GMT -0700)
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