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Sviatoslav Richter Live in the 1950s: Fanfare Review
Older readers may remember the shock of discovery when the first of Sviatoslav Richter's discs
made their way to the West. Since his first US tour in 1960, of course, he has been a fixture in the
American musical imagination (although not in our concert halls), and we have been able to sample
a far wider selection of his art in vastly better sound than that afforded by those early LPs. Still, as
Richard Taruskin reminded us in an eloquent appreciation (13:3, p. 244), the Richter of the 1950s
and early 1960s was a substantially more febrile artist than the "courtly, white-mustnchioed elder
statesman" he has become--snd it is therefore not just nostalgia that gives his early recordings their
magnetic chraracter. BMG's ten-disc celebration, reviewed in detail by Leslie Gerber in 19:3,
resurrected a significant number of scorching early studio recordings. The five discs under review,
although they retrace much of the some repertoire, document live performances, sometimes a bit
sloppier than the studio versions, but often fueled by an even more impetuos spirit and reaching
an even higher emotional temperature.
This is especially evident in the stunning, four-disc salvo from Gerber's own Parnassus
Records, which brings us five hours of new recordings, in surprisingly serviceable sound, that have
apparently never been released before. The contents consist largely of early-Richter staples-but the
high-contrast peformances are, without exception, knockouts. All of Richter's interpretations
demonstrate a staggering diversity of touch (note how his hard-bitten account of Rachmaninov's op.32/7 melts away at the end) and an almost unerring rhythmic control, both of small gestures and of larger paragraphs--note, for instance, how the Chopin Etude, op. lO/I, explodes forth as a single
utterance. But what marks Richter's early virtuoso efforts in particular is the way these qualities
combine to grip you, rather than persuade you. There are other Richter performances that are more
lighthearted (for instance, his four-hand Mozart with Britten; see 16:1); there are others, like his
early 80s Tokyo Prokofiev (17;3), that offer more density of detail; and there -are certainly others
(most notably his contoversial Schubert Bb, 6:4; see Michael Ullman's dissent in 14:4) that convey
deeper philosophical insights. But his early performances have a demonic intensity that was often
tempered in his later years; and these four discs offer ample opportunity to experience, undiluted,
the aural adrenaline rush that Taruskin described.
Certainly, no one else manages to steer through the Schumann Toccata with such brio, largely
because no one else, not even Horowitz, manages to shape the music's syncopations so that the
textures never clot. In part because of a quicker tcmpo, but also in part because of a greater sense
of abandon, this fierce account of the finale of the Prokofiev Seventh is even mord overwhelming
than his famous studio version. And despite moments of apparent brusqueness (patience is not in
high supply on these discs), this 1953 dash through Pictures is so impulsive as to make his classic
Sofia account seem almost blasé.
I don't mean to suggest that these are relentlessly steely readings in the manner of Simon
Barere. Richter has an astonishing capacity for elegance. too (try the sixth of the Prokofiev Visions)
and his Rachmaninov, like the first movement of his Scriabin Second, can be extremely lush: try,
for instance, the superb weighting of the cadences on op. 23/4. But when, for instance, he heightens
the contrast of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Sonata by sweetening up the second theme,
he manages to do so without dissipating the sense of urgency--transforming, by sheer willpower,
the music's redundancy into propulsion. There are claws beneath the velvet passages in this chipper
Tchaikovsky Concerto as well; and although his Scriabin Sixth and his Schumann Humoresque both
manifest a remarkable sympathy for the music's mercurial swings, there is an underlying edge to
both works that is apt to keep you off balance. Given the extent to which the Parnassus repertoire
duplicates that of recordings already in the catalog (more or less contemporaneous performances
with a similar interpretive slant and superior sound), I will resist the temptation to promote these
discs as the best introduction to Richter's art of the 1950s: but Richter aficionados should find them
an invaluable supplement to their collections. Highly recommended.
Peter J.Rabinowitz;
Fanfare May/June 1997