/ world today news/ 105 years since the birth of Svyatoslav Richter
It is said that the artist-musician’s art could only in very rare cases break away from the mediating spheres predetermined by nature itself and rise to the primary author’s creativity. Therefore, the birth of such artists is always a joyful, significant event. It is they, with their truly inspired work, who form the laws of creative life. Svyatoslav Richter / 1915-1997/ was a musician of this type. Those who were close to him claim that he was always absorbed by the deep current of imagery in every work he touched.
Svyatoslav Teofilovich Richter was born under the sign of Pisces, on March 20, 1915, in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, in a Russian-German family, but he grew up in cosmopolitan Odessa. He received his first music lessons from his father – a pianist, organist and teacher. From 1933 to 1936, the young Richter worked as an accompanist at the Odessa Opera and dreamed of a career as an opera conductor / he would later marry a singer, the wonderful chamber singer Nina Dorliak/, but in the middle of 1937, quite unexpectedly, he appeared for the piano entrance exams department of the Moscow Conservatory and was immediately accepted into the class of Heinrich Neuhaus. The meeting with the famous pianist and teacher predetermined his path in art. In Moscow, he studied with a whole group of talented young students – most became European celebrities, then a whole generation of future great musicians appeared! – among them is the brilliant Emile Gilles. In 1940 – the 25-year-old pianist performed with sensational success his first solo concert in the Great Hall of the Conservatory, to establish himself in just a few seasons among the leading Russian instrumentalists, and from the beginning of the fifties of the last century, after a series of brilliant tours in abroad, and among the first musicians of our time. Of course, his path, especially in Soviet times, is not entirely easy – in the 1950s and 1960s it was very difficult for him to go abroad and the Goskoncert from Moscow took most of his fees – the country was still a closed system, even and for its famous artists!
Like most musical geniuses, Svyatoslav Richter reached great mastery early in his career. Once upon a time, the great Spanish poet Lorca, who was also a wonderful musician, wrote that in order to penetrate the world of Music, you must have a “strong imagination”, to overcome the difficulties of its technique, “you reach its fantasy and passion”. Yes, Richter reached fantasy and passion in this amazing art and received from the world critics the title «The Pianist of the Planet»!
Richter has been performing actively for more than four decades. During this time he prepared and presented a vast piano repertoire of all styles and eras. And most of his performances were defined by critics as unsurpassed, fantastic, benchmark. When Richter played, there was a feeling of truth, of what was happening and what was cut through the language of music. His interpretations of the concertos of Grieg and Schumann, of Brahms, Chopin and Tchaikovsky, of the sonatas of Schubert and Beethoven, of pieces by Debussy, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Ravel, Berg, Hindemith and Shostakovich were striking with their depth and scale. Fortunately, his discography is huge, and any listener today can attest to that. The critic Yakov Milshtein is right when he said: “No praise will seem sufficient to us when we evaluate the performance of Svetoslav Teofilovich.” Everything here amazes: both the depth of thought, and the purity and genuineness of feelings, and his fabulous, I would say, fantastic craftsmanship. And it won’t be an exaggeration to say that this man’s playing goes beyond the limits of the possible, of the believable…”
And a personal memory:
Indeed, it is difficult to add anything to these words. I well remember his last, third concert in my hometown, Rousse / after his visits in 1958 and 1976/ at the House of Culture / Philharmonia/. I stayed in the front lobby to see him when he came in – I knew he usually came at the last minute, just before kick-off. With a quick, lithe step he passed through the two lobbies on the ground floor. Turn left. He crossed the narrow corridor behind the stage and emerged from the left door. Slowly, already fully immersed in the music, he passed in front of the crowded hall / chairs were placed for the audience even on the stage itself!/. He approached the shiny black Steinway, bowed and sat down. I could see his hands and face well. Richter was monumental, almost motionless, but how free and seemingly disembodied he was. Gradually, the music enveloped him in some invisible veil that slowly spread over the entire hushed, breathless hall.
Caught up in this magic, we all seemed to be heading towards the Infinity where there was nothing but Music…
P.P.
Perhaps few people know that in 1952 Svyatoslav Richter, an already recognized young talent, also appeared as…an artist in feature films. In director Grigory Alexandrov’s film Glinka the Composer, he performed the role of Franz Liszt in an episode presenting the great Hungarian pianist and composer’s tour in St. Petersburg.
Richter as Liszt in the film “The Composer Glinka” / 1952/
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