"I believe you can divide musical performance into two categories: those who seek to exploit the instrument they use and those who do not. In the first category, if we believe history, is a place for such legendary characters as Liszt and Paganini as well as many allegedly demanding virtuosi of more recent vintages. That category belongs essentially to musicians determined to make us aware of their relationship with their instrument. They allow that relationship to become the focus of attention. The second category includes musicians who try to bypass the whole question of the performing mechanism, to create the illusion of a direct link between themselves and a particular musical score. And, therefore, help the listener to achieve a sense of involvement, not with the performance per se but rather with the music itself. And in our time, there's no better example of that second musician than Sviatoslav Richter. What Richter does is insert between the listener and the composer his own enormously powerful personality as a kind of conduit. And we gain the impression that we're discovering the work anew and, often, from a quite different perspective than we're accustomed to."