P0686. SVIATOSLAV RICHTER: Richter in Budapest, incl. Schubert, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Debussy & Moussorgsky (the latter’s Pictures at an Exhibition). (E.U.) West Hill Radio Archives WHRA 6023, Live Performance, 9 Feb., 1958, Budapest (issued for the first time complete & unabridged). Transfers by Albert Frantz. - 5425008376752

CRITIC REVIEWS:

“In its entirety the Budapest concert disc goes immediately into the ‘Richter I cannot live without’ category. Risking wearisome superlatives, I have to admit that during each of many listenings to the white-hot Schubert c minor Sonata and PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION that were the recital’s principal offerings, I was overcome by sheer jaw-dropped wonder. Both these works and, indeed, all the Schumann, Rachmaninov and Debussy choices exist on more than one Richter version, yet none of the others that I possess – not even the Mussorgsky from the fabled Sofia recital later the same year wholly manifests this first-note-to-last directedness of aims and means, this visionary combination of dramatic intensity and simplicity of touch and texture.”

- Max Loppert, CLASSICAL RECORDINGS QUARTERLY, Autumn, 2010

“I don’t know if it is possible to explain to anybody the extraordinary phenomenon his personality and playing created. We can only hope that this can also be sensed through the recordings, for Richter is one of the few performers whose individuality is clearly manifest on a recording, regardless of its quality, and at each subsequent listening his playing gives a greater, more staggering experience than we are able to remember.”

- Dezsó Ránki

“There were quite a number of great pianists in the Twentieth Century. There are even great pianists in the Twenty-First Century. But Richter stands alone, the purity and passion of his devotion to music, of his unique genius, obvious in every note. This was a man who said, in all modesty, just play the notes on the page. Yet he was a man able to transmit the spiritual essence of music, a man able to leap the chasm between self and other, between aesthetics and life. What a tale he might have told were he inclined to the verbal. But he was not. His comments about his music making were most often along the lines of, ‘I played well’, or, ‘I played poorly’. Neuhaus instantly recognized him, his first true genius pupil, when Richter arrived at the Moscow Conservatory at the unusually old age of 22. ‘He makes a nearly perfect interpretation as soon as he sees a work. I have never seen any other pianist that has wider artistic horizon than him’. But I don’t imagine Richter cared one way or the other. The music was all that ever mattered.

Someone described Richter as a sort of chameleon, taking on the hues of the music he’s performing. This is apt. I remember the first time I heard him play Grieg’s Lyric Pieces. It is the sweetest, simplest, most honest and heart felt playing of this wonderful music, and this from the man I had always considered the greatest Beethoven exponent on record. It was the same with Bach’s’Well Tempered Clavier’. And with Schubert’s sonatas: absolute truthfulness to the music. Can you imagine a chef who is a master of every cuisine?

As for the music, he makes one use words like ‘greatest’. He washes away considerations and preconceptions through the sheer power and truthfulness of his playing. It is particularly difficult talking about a Richter performance. I recall a Russian expert speaking of Richter in terms of a spiritual teacher. Yes. That is closer to the truth than anything I’ve said.”

- Russell Lichter, THE STEREO TIMES, Jan., 2005