He concluded it with a passage from Proust about interpretation. Unbeknown to him, Proust was also one of Richter's passions. The next day another call came: 'Maestro wants to see you immediately.
Monsaingeon recalls his first visit to Richter's hotel room. Well aware of Richter's petulant nature, as well as his refusal to be filmed, Monsaingeon initially taped their conversations. When he broached the subject of filming them, Richter was non-committal, so Monsaingeon decided to take the initiative by installing a hidden camera. Getting Richter to talk, however, proved to be 'a nightmare'. Most of the time, he would say nothing but 'Yes' or 'I suppose so'.
He also had a knack of saving choice anecdotes for the wrong moments. During dinner at a restaurant one evening, Richter launched into a story about reading through Shostakovich's 9th Symphony with the composer.
Ignoring Monsaingeon's plea to save it for the film, he described how Shostakovich kept filling his glass with cognac and how he collapsed in the gutter on his way home and spent most of the night there.
The next day, when the camera was rolling, nothing could induce him to repeat the story. Fortunately, Monsaingeon did manage to squeeze a number of other anecdotes out of him on film.
He also got Richter to read passages from his diary and skilfully mixed this footage with concert performances, home videos and Soviet archive material to trace his life. Richter was born in Ukraine in , the son of a professional pianist. He claims he never studied, but simply started playing by launching in to a Chopin Nocturne. At the age of 15, he worked as an accompanist at the Odessa Opera, where he was often paid in bags of potatoes.
The premiere performance was a great success. After the audience had left the hall, the remaining musicians were anxious to hear the work again and pressed Richter to oblige. He noted that there was an atmosphere of elation and seriousness in the hall, "and this time I played well. Although Richter met Prokofiev on a number of occasions, he said, "I had more contact with Prokofiev's music than with the composer himself. I was never particularly close to him as a person: he intimidated me.
By the beginning of the Second World War, Richter's parents' marriage was over and with the restrictions, he had little communication with them. His father had come under increasing pressure from the authorities and in , during one of Stalin's purges, was arrested and later charged as guilty of espionage. He was executed on October Richter had no idea until after the war that his father had died, nor that his mother was still alive after fleeing to Germany where she remarried.
In Richter met his future wife, the soprano Nina Dorliak at the Moscow conservatory. A week after he introduced himself to her he had moved in previously he'd been sleeping under Neuhaus's piano. They married in and remained companions for 55 years until Richter's death, giving many recitals together. Outwardly at least, Richter was completely indifferent to political events, though he would later defy the authorities when he played at Boris Pasternak's funeral.
But in he was ordered to fly to Moscow, alone, in a plane full of wreaths to play at Stalin's state funeral. He chose the longest and most complex of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues and when the piano's pedals didn't work, stuffed a score underneath.
The authorities thought he was planting a bomb and when he refused to stop to make way for another musician, soldiers removed him by force. Although Richter hated the process of recording, he was persuaded to start making studio recordings for the USSR State record company from and later for Melodiya label from to Many of his best recordings emanated from 'live' performances. Bucharest, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw and then China the following year.
He liked to elude his 'minders' when abroad, slipping out into the city streets at night-time. Travel to the west was still restricted in these years, though the west knew about him. When Emil Gilels first travelled there in the s under the aegis of Khrushchev's cultural thaw, and was told how wonderful he was, he'd reply, "Wait until you hear Richter. By , Richter's fame was so huge, aroused by his recordings and travellers' tales from behind the iron curtain, the Russian authorities could contain him no longer, and in May he toured the United States, causing a sensation, giving no less than five recitals at Carnegie Hall within twelve days.
In the audience was his mother who'd remained in Germany and hadn't seen her son for nearly 20 years. Straight away, Richter began recording in the west for a huge variety of record companies, making his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf performing Brahms Piano Concerto No. But his phobia of recording never diminished. Concert manager Jacques Leiser who worked with Richter for nearly 40 years said, "he continued to find studio recording unnatural and high-pressured.
Even when we recorded him onstage, he insisted that he not be able to see the microphones. We would have to hide them in potted palms and among vases of flowers. Rudolf Serkin, who'd lived in the US for many years told Richter, "If you want to stay here, I'll find you an apartment. If you ever decide to leave America, I will find you an apartment in 15 mins. In his later years, in tandem with a flurry of long concert tours including one across Siberia to Japan by train and ship as he hated air travel Richter began to concentrate more on his beloved chamber music.
He had many long-term partnerships with the Borodin Quartet, and with instrumentalists like David Oistrakh and Mstislav Rostropovich. He visited the Aldeburgh Festival five times, playing duets with Benjamin Britten on occasion, and he regularly accompanied his own soprano wife, Nina Dorliak and later distinguished singers including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer Dieskau. Richter was also highly sought after as an ensemble player. His sight-reading of a new score was impeccable which also made him a highly demanded recording artist.
He had a special talent for harmonizing the sound within ensembles he played with, due to his gift of listening, instant attunement, and complementing the performances of his fellow musicians. Svyatoslav Richter was widely recognized as the leading classical pianist of the 20th century. His live concerts as well as his recordings belong among the highest achievements in the art of piano performance.
Richter was widely admired for his ability to create magic with his piano playing and for his special presence on stage, as well, as for his wit and wisdom off stage.
In his numerous concert performances he demonstrated a rare technical finesse, exquisite phrasing, and impressive tone control.
He was very serious about the quality of his piano and was known for touring with his own piano which was maintained exclusively by his technician. Svyatoslav Richter was the founder of several international music festivals, such as the famous December Nights Festival at the Pushkin Museum of Arts in Moscow.
He launched the Music Festival in Touraine, France. In his later years Svyatoslav Richter moved from Russia to Europe. Richter was not informed by authorities, that at the same time his father was executed by firing squad in Odessa, upon the order of the Soviet authorities, in After such a painful experience Richter became a very quiet man.
He expressed himself by playing music. He never joined the communist party or any of its affiliations, and was known for skipping compulsory political lessons and being expelled from Moscow Conservatory twice. Svyatoslav Richter, one of the greatest pianist of the 20th century who was largely self-taught, had survived traumatic events and restrictions on his concert tours during the Soviet era and was widely recognized as the leading pianist of his time.
Young Richter grew up in Odessa, He took some music lessons from his organist father, but remained largely self-taught and practiced his piano rigorously.
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