Richter Rediscovered
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Music CD Cover
Composer: Frederic ChopinComposer: Claude Debussy
Composer: Franz Joseph Haydn
Composer: Sergey Prokofiev
Composer: Sergey Rachmaninov
Composer: Maurice Ravel
Performer: Sviatoslav Richter
Edition: Music CD
Format: Limited Edition, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2005-07-18
Music Label: RCA
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Applause
- Allegro
- Adagio
- Allegro molto
- No. 5, La Vall?e des Cloches
- Applause
- Allegro moderato
- Allegretto
- Tempo di valzer lentissimo
- Vivace
- No. 3, Allegretto
- No. 3, Allegretto
- No. 3, Allegretto
- No. 4, Animato
- No. 4, Animato
- No. 5, Molto giocoso
- No. 6, Con eleganza
- No. 8, Commodo
- No. 8, Commodo
- No. 9, Allegretto Tranquillo
- No. 11, Con vivicit?
- No. 11, Con vivicit?
- No. 14, Feroce
- No. 15, Inquieto
- No. 18, Con una dolce lentezza
- No. 2, Gavotte
- No. 4, Animato
Free Music Notes for Richter Rediscovered
Free Music Review: Richter in America - historical, masterful
Hit: 5 Stars
When Emil Gilels toured the U.S. in 1955 his response to critics who raved about his performances is said to have been: "Wait until you hear Richter!" Now that's gallantry. Only in May 1960 was Richter allowed to tour outside of the Soviet block, and it was no further than Finland. Five month later a big US tour was arranged, whose culmination was a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall. In July of the next year it was London, in October Paris, in May 1962 came Florence in Italy followed by Vienna in June and again in September for two programs of concertos, then back to Italy in October and November, and Paris in December (all this information comes from the wonderful Richter website maintained by Paul Geffen. For the discographic documentation of that era, see my review of Sviatoslav Richter: In Memoriam).
Back to October 1960, then. After an orchestral concert on the 15th with the Chicago Symphony under Leinsdorf with Brahms' 2nd Piano Concerto (immediately followed by the famous recording), Richter was at Carnegie Hall on the 19th with a program of Beethoven Sonatas (9, 12, 22, 23), followed on the 23rd by an all-Prokofiev program, whose highlights were the 6th and 8th Sonatas (there was another orchestral concert in Philadelphia between those two New York Concerts, in which Richter and Ormandy played both Dvorak's Piano Concerto and again Brahms' 2nd). More Carnegie Hall concerts followed on the 25 (Haydn-Schumann-Debussy), 28 (Beethoven-Schumann-Rachmaninoff), 30 (Schumann's Fantasie, Chopin, Ravel, Scriabin's 5th Sonata). In November Richter was all over the US, from Boston to LA, even making a foray to Toronto and Montreal in December. November is also when he recorded three Beethoven Sonatas and the 1st Piano Concerto for RCA (The Brahms Concerto and Beethoven items have conveniently been collated on Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Concerto 1/Brahms: Piano Concerto 2). This grand tour ended at the end of December with three more solo recitals in New York, one at Carnegie Hall again (23) in which he repeated his initial Beethoven program (adding the 3rd Sonata), and two more at Carnegie and the Mosque Theatre in Newark with the same program (except for the encores): Haydn's Sonata Hob XVI/50, Chopin's 4th Scherzo and 3rd Ballade, 4 Rachmaninoff Preludes, Ravel's Jeux d'Eau and Vall?e des Cloches, then Prokofiev's 6th Sonata. And this is what is documented on this 2-CD set.
As the producer's note contained in the set makes clear, some of the material from these various Carnegie Hall concerts had been previously issued on LP (and in mono) in the mid-1960s, but never reissued, partly because of Richter's opposition to those releases. Likewise, the last Newark concert was published in 1965 on an RCA LP, "Richter in recital", with the addition of five of the ten Visions Fugitives that Richter played as encores on the previous Carnegie Hall concert. The present set is exceptional in that it brings back the full December Carnegie Hall concert in great, remastered stereo (piano sounding slightly metallic I find), encores included (10 excerpts from Prokofiev's Visions fugitives), to which it adds, as a fantastic bonus, the encores from the Newark concert (Prokofiev's Gavotte from Cinderella and a repeat of Vision Fugitive 4, Debussy's Collines d'Anacapri, two Chopin Etudes and a Mazurka.
Although Doremi has now reissued those other October Carnegie Hall Concerts (Sviatoslav Richter Archives, Vol. 10), some of the material featured on these 2-CDs is highly significant for the Richterite. While there are a number of other Richter recordings of the Rachmaninoff Preludes and Chopin pieces, there is only one other Richter studio recording of Haydn's Hob XVI/50 (Sonata # 60), from a few months earlier on Melodiya (reissued on Russian Piano School: Sviatoslav Richter, Volume Six with some Beethoven and Chopin material that, according to Geffen's discography, is attributed deceptive dates). Likewise, the Ravel items are relative rarities for Richter, although other live recitals do crop up now and then (Sviatoslav Richter in the 1950s, Vol. 3, Sviatoslav Richter Out of Later Years, Vol. 3). As for Prokofiev, like Gilels, Richter had special authority with this composer, premiering the 7th Sonata in 1943 and playing the 6th shortly after the composer had premiered it himself in 1940, which makes this concert an indispensable testimony - although earlier live recordings , from 1956 have been published by Praga (Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas Op.14, 82, 103) and Parnassus (Sviatoslav Richter in the 1950s, Volume 4). An earlier recital from 1958 in Moscow with the same selection of Visions fugitives was also released by Parnassus (Sviatislav Richter in the 1950s, Vol. 1).
This is exceptional piano playing. True, Richter's way can be somewhat wayward in Chopin, which smacks very much of Rachmaninoff. But his Rachmaninoff is, of course, unquestionable, and likewise his Prokofiev. In his wonderful notes Harris Goldsmith quotes his original review of these concerts in High Fidelity, contending that Richter's way with Prokofiev "was quite different from that of the steely-fingered, young virtuosos who are springing up all around us. Percussive, motoric energy is underplayed here, and the basic stress is on the immaculate proportion, the coloristic sensititvity and the impressionist lyricism of the writing". Now, now, that may be true with the two middle movements, but the finale lacks no steel, and by the end of the Sonata Goldsmith must have forgotten its first movement. With Richter it can be so percussive and pounding it makes you think of Bartok. Richter's Haydn I find exceptional and endearing for its delicacy and bounce. The same delicacy is much in evidence in Debussy's Collines d'Anacapri, which Richter keeps in soft dynamics, commendably resisting the virtuoso temptation of a hollow display of pyrotechnics. His Ravel is wonderfully atmospheric and evocative.
Lavish presentation, excellent and through notes, with a new essay by Harris Goldsmith reminiscent on these concerts which he was fortunate to attend, and a somewhat condescending article written back then by Harold C. Schoenberg, something like "what Richter still has to learn from the West". The West had much to learn from Richter.
Richter Rediscovered Poster
RCA Victor's Richter Rediscovered lets us hear Sviatoslav Richter perform with intensity and purpose he rarely matched and still more rarely surpassed. This two-CD set comprises Richter's entire Dec. 26, 1960, Carnegie Hall recital and several encores from the same program two days later in Newark's Mosque Theater. Most transcripts of Richter's live performances miss details in his playing--the prismatic shimmer of his tone in all registers, for example, or the way he could instantaneously jump from triple pianissimo to triple fortissimo. But RCA's superb recorded sound does justice to the pianist's variety of nuance and range of dynamics. Younger listeners will now hear Richter "live" the way we older ones remember him: performing Haydn's Sonata No. 50 in C with lapidarian perfection as well as with freedom of rhythm and expression; diversifying, without diluting, the savagery of Prokofiev's Sonata No. 6 by employing softer colors than those usually heard; playing Rachmaninov's Prelude in A with gigantic chords made more all the more impressive by the subtle emergence of the delicate melody from within them; and endowing Chopin's ?tude in A flat (Op. 10, No. 10) with breathtaking poetry through ingenious variations of touch and rhythm. --Stephen WiglerClassical Music CDs
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