Never Like Anyone Else

There are purists who climb the walls when German Conductor-Organist-Harpsichordist Karl Richter performs Bach. They are the music scholars who haggle over the proper reading of a single phrase in a baroque score. To them, imagination--and Richter has plenty--is the ultimate transgression.

Then there are those who are not afraid of originality. They know, for example, that if the exact performance methods of the 18th century were applied today, the orchestral playing would be poorer and the wind and brass instruments more primitive. This second group represents an increasing majority, and its members vote Richter master of today's Bach interpreters.

Just why was demonstrated emphatically last week during the nine-day Munich Bach Festival, which was as close to a one-man show as any festival is likely to be. It seemed impressive enough that Richter, 41, a stern-faced, paunchy little man in an ill-fitting tailcoat, could play the Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord one day and conduct the Mass in B Minor that same night; or play major organ works a second evening; or accompany Violinist Christian Ferras a third night. What really set Richter's achievement apart was that his performances sounded so fresh and dramatic--never at variance with Bach's instructions, but never quite like anyone else's interpretation either.

Prussian Drill. Richter is more concerned with music's metaphysical byways than with "authenticity." In making up his choirs, for example, he ignores the traditional use of boys for the soprano and alto parts, invariably picks college-age women; he thinks boys are usually too young to convey the meaning of the words. And after he has subjected the women to what he calls "a Prussian kind of drill discipline," they are able to give him the pure, crystal slenderness of tone that he thinks the music demands.

Finally, he is not afraid to interpret the music subjectively. Where most conductors read the poignant Crucifixus in the B minor Mass in a slow, lugubrious manner, Richter takes it quickly, in a light, airy fashion that points not so much to death as to the resurrection to come. He is aware that modern-day scholars have scraped Bach clean of 19th century Victorian interpretative encrustations in favor of smaller choirs, reduced orchestras, rebuilt 18th century organs, and proper ornamentation. But he stubbornly refuses to be bound by any school. "I don't take my beat from the metronome," he explains. "I listen to my pulsebeat."

Furthermore, recalls Richter, Bach performed most of his music himself and saw no need to fill his manuscripts with the exact indications of dynamics and tempo. In allowing his own imagination to roam freely through the composer's scant expressive markings, Richter is in the tradition of Casals, Landowska and Schweitzer, all of them deliberately impure in their attitude toward the printed page.

Beards & Blondes. Never, in the 18 years since he fled East Germany as a penniless refugee, has Richter's prestige been higher. Many a city--notably Vienna--has tried to lure him from Munich, but he is not budging. Why should he, when bearded students, blonde duchesses, convent novices, bank presidents and scientists are fighting for tickets to his concerts? He lives a lonely personal life--smoking nervously on long, solitary walks along the banks of the Isar River, draining bottle after bottle of beer while studying at night. But his relationship with his public is a happy affair, best summed up, perhaps, by Katie Spencer, a 23-year-old piano student from Cincinnati: "There is no other serious musician in the world today who has such a habit-forming effect--who automatically makes addicts. There is something that swings in his Bach." In Richter too, obviously.

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