A Musician First, a Pianist Second

By Michael Walsh

Is there a more stimulating, captivating and exasperating pianist than Sviatoslav Richter? When the reclusive Ukrainian-born musician -- the last of the Soviet-era superstars -- is good, he's very, very good. And when he's bad, he's horrid. But in an age of cookie-cutter pianists, each playing the same program in the same way, Richter, at least, is gloriously himself.

Consider Richter: The Authorised Recordings, a 21-CD collection of previously unreleased performances now available from Philips Classics in limited numbers and selling for about $350. The tapes, which cover a span of a quarter-century and include both live and studio recordings, were discovered unmarked and unedited in the company's vaults in Holland in 1993 and were released earlier this fall with the imprimatur of the temperamental pianist. The music represents the heart of his repertoire: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Haydn, Weber, Chopin, Liszt, Scriabin, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. There is probably no better compendium of Richter's art.

The pianist, who is 79, was already a legend by the time he burst onto the international scene in 1960 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.

All of 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 communicate his message by telepathy, directly to the listener's mind and heart.

At the 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.

Richter's playing of the gentle G Major Sonata by Schubert is representative. The daringly slow, practice-room tempo he adopts for the first movement is maddening; any other pianist who tried this would have his knuckles rapped with a ruler. And yet he makes every note count, and lets every note sing. Selections from Bach's English and French suites are similarly illuminated, the musical architecture delineated with precision. Richter also proves adept, perhaps surprisingly, at Mozart, offering limpid, crystalline performances of a handful of sonatas and fantasies. And, of course, in the Russians he is paramount: The Authorised Recordings offers dazzling readings of the Fourth and Sixth Prokofiev sonatas, as well as 10 of the mysterious, fleeting Visions fugitives.

Less successful are Richter's forays into Brahms and Liszt. The two composers represented polar opposites in the 19th century, Brahms the classicist vs. Liszt the avant-gardist, but Richter treats both of them with disdain. The Brahms First and Second sonatas (where, oh where, is the magisterial Third?) each receive a sloppy playing, whereas the Liszt Sonata, the composer's masterpiece, is treated as if it were just another shabby Hungarian Rhapsody trying to get in out of the rain.

Still, Richter is one of the age's master musicians. When the music interests him, he is compelling, engaged and note-perfect; when it doesn't, he shows that he couldn't care less. "This man Richter is not a sober, overpowering machine-age human being," said conductor Erich Leinsdorf, with whom Richter made his American debut in Chicago. "He is a musician out of the Victorian age." Leinsdorf was right. Richter really is the last Romantic: the artist as audacious, willful hero.