Sviatoslav Richter

"The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composers intentions to the letter. He doesnt add anything that isnt 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 shouldnt dominate the music, but should dissolve into it."

"Richter was like a god to me. I met him in Warsaw in 1991. Because I wanted to watch him rehearsing, I literally lay on the floor behind the stage. When he arrived, he didnt even try the piano. The next day I got a phone call. They needed someone to turn pages for him. In fact a young girl had been chosen to do it, but when Richter knew that he said he couldnt play with a woman beside him because he would find her breasts too inhibiting! Later I discovered he never tried the piano before a concert. He used to say that a concert was a matter of fate. That made a big impression on me and I tend to take a similar approach."

"Great pianists usually have one or two facets that dominate their performances in ways that beget adjectives: Horowitzian thunder, Gouldian staccato, Serkin-like nervous energy, Hofmannesque inner-voices, Cortotish rubato. Yet what makes Sviatoslav Richters playing "Richterian" is not so easy to pin down. The recordings display a multitude of Richters at work. He can be delicate or brusque, withdrawn or optimistic, scrupulous or cavalier, an architect or a miniaturist, a poet or a pedant. One consistent attribute is the pianists distinctive tone. The beauty and clarity of his sound shimmers with prismatic transparency at all dynamic levels. Chords are always translucent and well balanced. Few pianists can summon the concentration and control that enable Richter, with his hypnotic legato, not only to sustain the unusually slow pace of the Sarabande of Bachs Third English Suite, or the First Movement of the Schubert G Major Sonata, D.894, but also to draw the listener into his sound world."

"Since his death, Sviatoslav Richter has emerged as the Grateful Dead of classical pianists. Wherever he played tape recorders followed, and, well, you know the rest. Numerous posthumous releases continue to compound and complicate the pianist’s overstuffed discography. That doesn’t stop Richter mavens from debating the relative merits of his countless recorded versions of this or that work, much as Deadheads pore over concert setlists and vote for their favorite “Dark Star” or “Playing in the Band”."

"I believe you can divide musical performance into two categories: those who seek to exploit the instrument they use and those who do not. In the first category, if we believe history, is a place for such legendary characters as Liszt and Paganini as well as many allegedly demanding virtuosi of more recent vintages. That category belongs essentially to musicians determined to make us aware of their relationship with their instrument. They allow that relationship to become the focus of attention. The second category includes musicians who try to bypass the whole question of the performing mechanism, to create the illusion of a direct link between themselves and a particular musical score. And, therefore, help the listener to achieve a sense of involvement, not with the performance per se but rather with the music itself. And in our time, theres no better example of that second musician than Sviatoslav Richter. What Richter does is insert between the listener and the composer his own enormously powerful personality as a kind of conduit. And we gain the impression that were discovering the work anew and, often, from a quite different perspective than were accustomed to."

"Richter magnetized me, like he did so many others, and I wouldnt have missed his concerts for anything. I think he communicated more than anyone else complete devotion and sincerity to his art. When I look back, this is what attracted me most to him then, and continues to do so today. I now understand that the strongest element in his magnetic appeal to audiences is his conviction that what he does is absolutely right at that particular moment. It comes from the fact that he has created his own inner world, absolutely complete in his mind, and if you argue with him about anything its almost no use. He might say "Yes, perhaps youre right, but I just dont feel it that way. This is what I feel and this is the way I play." And thats it. I dont often agree him after the performance, but during it I can see that everything fits together and is completely sincere and devoted, and that wins me over. Im sure that many people feel exactly the same but, in my case, since I am a practising musician, the fact that I am won over at the time of the performance is extraordinary. In almost all other cases I disagree right there and then at the moment when a performance is taking place! In addition to his many other wonderful qualities Richter is for me the greatest interpreter of Debussy; his playing really has three or four dimensions. Its not just beautiful sounds and beautiful sonorities; I find the imagination behind the sonorities unmatchable. There is a fantastic feeling of spontaneity and of "creating at this moment". In fact, everything is worked out before, but at the same time he always creates "at this moment", and this feeling is marvellous."