Sviatoslav Richter

Biography

Childhood

Richter was born in Zhitomir in Volhynia Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), the hometown of his parents. His father, Teofil Danilovich Richter (1872–1941), was a pianist, organist and composer born to German expatriates, who from 1893 to 1900 studied at the Vienna Conservatory. His mother, Anna Pavlovna Richter (née Moskaleva; 1893–1963), came from a noble Russian landowning family, and at one point had studied under her future husband. In 1918, when Richter's parents were in Odessa, the Civil War separated them from their son, and Richter moved in with his aunt Tamara. He lived with her from 1918 to 1921, and it was then that his interest in art first manifested itself: he first became interested in painting, which his aunt taught him.

In 1921 the family was reunited, and the Richters moved to Odessa, where Teofil taught at the Odessa Conservatory and, briefly, worked as organist of a Lutheran church. Richter recalled that his father was appointed to a position at the Odessa Conservatory shortly after his birth. However, a recently identified archival document suggests that Witold Maliszewski may have offered Teofil Richter a position at the conservatory as early as 1914.

In the early 1920s Richter became interested in music (as well as other art forms such as cinema, literature, and theatre) and started studying piano. Unusually, he was largely self-taught. His father gave him only a basic education in music, as did one of his father's pupils, a Czech harpist.

Even at an early age Richter was an excellent sight-reader and regularly practised with local opera and ballet companies. He developed a lifelong passion for opera, vocal, and chamber music, which found its full expression in the festivals he established in La Grange de Meslay, France, and in Moscow at the Pushkin Museum. At age 15, he started to work at the Odessa Opera, where he accompanied the rehearsals.

Early career

On March 19, 1934, Richter gave his first recital, at the Engineers' Club of Odessa, at which he performed an all-Chopin program, including Ballade No. 4 and Etude No. 4. The concert was generally successful, with Richter later recalling that the performance of Chopin's Fourth Ballade was particularly well received, despite his own harsh self-criticism. Although members of the Odessa press were in attendance, the concert received no press coverage.

During that period, Sviatoslav Richter's father, Teofil Richter, was repeatedly humiliated and subjected to abuse at the Odessa Conservatory. Despite being an exceptionally gifted pianist and composer and a graduate of the Vienna Conservatory, he was prohibited from teaching piano to piano students. The identities of those responsible have not been disclosed publicly to this day.

Sviatoslav Richter did not formally start studying piano until three years later, when he decided to seek out Heinrich Neuhaus, a pianist and piano teacher, at the Moscow Conservatory. During Richter's audition for Neuhaus, at which he performed Beethoven's Sonata No. 28 and a few of his own compositions, Neuhaus whispered to a fellow student, "I believe he is a musician of genius." Although Neuhaus taught many pianists, including Emil Gilels and Radu Lupu, it is said that he considered Richter to be "the genius pupil, for whom he had been waiting all his life", while acknowledging that he taught Richter "almost nothing".

Early in his career Richter also tried composition, and it even appears that he played some of his works during his audition for Neuhaus. He gave up composition shortly after moving to Moscow. Years later, Richter explained this decision as follows: "Perhaps the best way I can put it is that I see no point in adding to all the bad music in the world".

By the beginning of World War II Richter's parents' marriage had failed and his mother had fallen in love with another man. Because Richter's father was a German, he was under suspicion by the authorities and a plan was made for the family to be evacuated. Due to her romantic involvement, his mother did not want to leave and so they remained in Odessa. In August 1941, his father was arrested and later found guilty after being falsely accused of espionage; he was sentenced to death and executed on October 6, 1941. Richter did not speak to his mother again until shortly before her death nearly 20 years later in connection with his first US tour. Because of the tragic fate of his father, Sviatoslav Richter vowed never to perform in Odessa again—a promise he kept. A recording has been preserved in which Sviatoslav Richter plays his father's music.

In 1943 Richter met Nina Dorliak (1908–1998), an operatic soprano. He noticed Dorliak during the memorial service for Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, caught up with her in the street and suggested that he accompany her in recital. Although it is often alleged that they married around this time, they never officially registered their marriage. They remained living companions from around 1945 until Richter's death; they had no children. According to Michel Krielaars, "Their relationship was purely platonic". Dorliak accompanied Richter both in his complex private life and career. She supported him in his final illness, and died herself less than a year later, on May 17, 1998.

Since his death it has been suggested that Richter was homosexual and that having a female companion provided a social front for his true sexual orientation, because homosexuality was widely taboo at that time and could result in legal repercussions. Michel Krielaars quotes three people who knew Richter personally and said that "of course" he was gay. Richter was an intensely private person and was usually quiet and withdrawn, and refused to give interviews. He never publicly discussed his personal life until the last year of his life when film-maker Bruno Monsaingeon convinced him to be interviewed for a documentary.

Rise to international profile

In 1950 Richter won the Stalin Prize, which led to extensive concert tours in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. He gave his first concerts outside the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia in 1950. In 1952, Richter was invited to play Franz Liszt in a film based on the life of Mikhail Glinka, called The Composer Glinka (remake of the 1946 film Glinka). The title role was played by Boris Smirnov.

On February 18, 1952, Richter made his sole appearance as a conductor in the world premiere of Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E minor, with Mstislav Rostropovich as the soloist.

In April 1958 Richter was on the jury of the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Watching Van Cliburn's performance of Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3, Richter wept with joy; he awarded Cliburn a 25, a perfect score.

In 1960, even though he had a reputation for being "indifferent" to politics, Richter defied the authorities when he performed at Boris Pasternak's funeral.

Having received the Stalin and Lenin prizes and become People's Artist of the RSFSR, he gave his first tour concerts in the US in 1960, and in England and France in 1961.

Touring and recording

In 1948 Richter and Dorliak gave recitals in Bucharest, Romania, then in 1950 performed in Prague and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. In 1954, Richter gave recitals in Budapest, Hungary. In 1956, he again toured Czechoslovakia, then in 1957, he toured China, then again performed in Prague, Sofia, and Warsaw. In 1958, Richter recorded Prokofiev's 5th Piano Concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Witold Rowicki – the recording which made Richter known in the United States. In 1959, Richter made another successful recording of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon label. Thus the West first became aware of Richter through recordings made in the 1950s. One of Richter's first advocates in the West was Emil Gilels, who stated during his first tour of the United States that the critics (who were giving Gilels rave reviews) should "wait until you hear Richter."

Richter's first concerts in the West took place in May 1960, when he was allowed to play in Finland, and on October 15, 1960, in Chicago, where he played Brahms's 2nd Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Erich Leinsdorf, creating a sensation. In a review, Chicago Tribune music critic Claudia Cassidy, who was known for her unkind reviews of established artists, recalled Richter first walking on stage hesitantly, looking vulnerable (as if about to be "devoured"), but then sitting at the piano and dispatching "the performance of a lifetime". The resulting recording won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance – Concerto or Instrumental Soloist for that year.

Richter's 1960 tour of the United States culminated in a highly acclaimed series of concerts at Carnegie Hall, the 25 October 1960 recital being particularly praised.

Richter disliked performing in the United States. Following a 1970 incident at Carnegie Hall in New York City, when Richter's performance alongside David Oistrakh was disrupted by anti-Soviet protests, Richter vowed never to return. Rumours of a planned return to Carnegie Hall surfaced in the last years of Richter's life, although it is not clear whether there was any truth behind them.

In 1961 Richter played for the first time in London. His first recital, pairing works of Haydn and Prokofiev, was received with hostility by British critics. Neville Cardus concluded that Richter's playing was "provincial", and wondered why Richter had been invited to play in London, given that London had plenty of "second class" pianists of its own. Following a July 18, 1961, concert, where Richter performed both of Liszt's piano concertos, the critics reversed course. The resulting recording with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kirill Kondrashin was acclaimed by many critics as the best ever made of those works.

In 1963 after searching in the Loire Valley, France, for a venue suitable for a music festival, Richter discovered La Grange de Meslay, several kilometres north of Tours. The festival was established by Richter and became an annual event. While in France, Richter recorded a highly acclaimed performance of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy.

In 1970 Richter visited Japan for the first time, travelling across Siberia by railway and ship as he disliked flying. He played Beethoven, Schumann, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Bartók and Rachmaninoff, as well as works by Mozart and Beethoven with Japanese orchestras. He visited Japan eight times.

Richter's repertoire included many works from the modern era. On 14 June 1969 Richter performed the Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand at Genoa with Riccardo Muti conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro Comunale di Genova.

Later years

In 1981 Richter initiated the international December Nights music festival, held at the Pushkin Museum, which after his death in 1997 was renamed December Nights of Sviatoslav Richter.

In 1986 Richter embarked on a six-month tour of Siberia with his beloved Yamaha piano, giving perhaps 150 recitals, at times performing in small towns that did not even have a concert hall. It is said that after one such concert, the members of the audience, who had never before heard classical music performed, gathered in the middle of the hall and started swaying from side to side to celebrate the performer.

In his last years Richter gave a few concerts for students that were free of charge (February 14, 1990: Teatro Romea, Murcia, Spain, also March 1, 1990: matinee concert in Teatre Municipal, Girona, Spain).

An anecdote illustrates Richter's approach to performance in the last decade of his life. After reading a biography of Charlemagne (he was an avid reader), Richter had his secretary send a telegram to the director of the theater in Aachen, Charlemagne's favoured residence city and his burial place, stating "The Maestro has read a biography of Charlemagne and would like to play at Aquisgrana (Aachen)". The performance took place shortly thereafter.

While he very much enjoyed performing for an audience, Richter hated planning concerts years in advance, and in later life took to playing at very short notice in small, most often darkened halls, with only a small lamp lighting the score. Richter said that this setting helped the audience focus on the music being performed, rather than on extraneous and irrelevant matters such as the performer's grimaces and gestures.

As late as 1995, Richter continued to perform some of the most demanding pieces in the pianistic repertoire, including Ravel's Miroirs cycle, Prokofiev's Second Sonata and Chopin's études, Ballade No. 4, and Schumann's Toccata.

Richter's last recorded orchestral performance was of three Mozart concerti in 1994 with the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra conducted by his old friend Rudolf Barshai.

Richter's last recital was a private gathering in Lübeck, Germany, on March 30, 1995. The program consisted of two Haydn sonatas and Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Beethoven, a piece for two pianos, which Richter performed with pianist Andreas Lucewicz.

Death

Richter died at Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow from a heart attack on August 1, 1997, aged 82. He had been suffering from depression due to an inability to perform caused by changes in his hearing that altered his perception of pitch. At the time of his death he was rehearsing Schubert's Fünf Klavierstücke, D. 459.