Word: richter
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Sviatoslav Richter...
Music: Lost tapes document the great Sviatoslav Richter...
...with concerts in Finland and America. Like his late Soviet compatriot Emil Gilels, he had been a student of Heinrich Neuhaus' at the Moscow Conservatory, where he met Prokofiev and premiered the composer's Sixth, Seventh and Ninth piano sonatas. Unlike most of the fire- breathing Soviet wunderkinder, though, Richter came to the piano late, originally planning a career as a conductor; until he went to study with Neuhaus at age 21, he was largely self-taught...
...which may account for Richter's distinctive, Olympian style. His huge stevedore's hands address the keys with the utmost confidence, and though the wrong notes sometimes fall thick and fast, there is never any question of who is in command -- or what the point of the performance really is. Richter has never been a virtuoso on the order of Vladimir Horowitz or Lazar Berman, a later Soviet firebrand with a crackling technique and not much else. Instead, he is a musician first and a pianist second. Hearing him play, one has the sense that if he could, he would...
...keyboard Richter leans backward at a precipitous angle, arms outstretched, head tossed back and gazing upward, as if toward heaven. The rapture suggested by such a pose separates Richter's artistry from that of his more earthbound contemporaries (although he can generate raw energy with the best of them -- just listen to his performance of the Schumann Toccata). Moreover, in the catholicity of his repertoire (far greater than Horowitz's) and the breadth of his interpretive insight, Richter leaves the competition behind...