pianists-from-russia

"Women are not a hobby—they're a calamity."

"There was something volcanic about Hambourg's style. With complete disdain for anything so prosaic as technical accuracy, he would pile sonority upon sonority. His records, and he made many, are often incredible. Through them, to be sure, one does get something of the vitality of the man and the excitement that he must have brought to music. But one also gets a profusion of wrong notes, text changes, even halting passages that would make his playing inexplicable today."

"Here lies Evgeny Kissin, son of the Jewish people, a servant of music."

"I can recall one memorable afternoon at one of his recitals in the old St. James's Hall, when just as he had begun to play Chopin's Funeral March—no over ever played it like him—a post horn from a coach in Piccadilly suddenly sounded. This so disturbed him (and no wonder) that he took his hands off the piano and dashed them down again pell-mell on the keys in a fit of rage and disgust. After a while he commenced the piece again, but the spirit of the music had left him, and for that day at least we were deprived of the beauty of his rendering."

"... He could, at will, move you to tears, thrill you with emotion, or make you shiver with excitement. It was no longer a piano he played on, but an entire orchestra, in which power, sweetness, and great execution vied with each other to produce effects totally unlike the efforts of any other single instrumentalist I have ever heard. ... The magnetism he exercised over his audiences was quite extraordinary, and I have seen them roused got such a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm that they could not sit still, but had perforce to rise from their seats to watch as well as listen to him. No one could help being absorbed in his performances; indeed, he was so himself, though perhaps not to the same extent, for any extraneous sound or movement would easily upset him and break the thread of his inspiration,"

"I think that with the death of Schumann and Chopin—‘finis musicae'.'’"

"She also used to wander around with a revolver, which she would show to all and sundry. It really was a bit much. She used to say: 'Hold this thing for me, but be careful, it’s loaded.’ One day she developed a crush on someone who didn’t return her advances. One can understand why; he must have been terrified of her. And so she challenged him to a duel. By the end of her concerts I always used to have a headache. She subjected her audiences to such a degree of intensity, an incredible intensity! And then there was her way of coming onstage; you had the impression she was walking through the rain. And she carried a crucifix and crossed herself before launching into the first note. I’ve nothing against this, but in Soviet Russia, at that time!… Of course, she cared for the poor, took them in and lived like a tramp herself. An eccentric woman and an extraordinary artist, but someone who always felt the need to invent things… Even so, I played at her funeral. Rachmaninoff."

"Maria Veniaminovna Yudina was a monstre sacré. I knew her, but only from afar – it has to be said that she was so odd that everyone avoided her. For her own part, she showed herself somewhat suspicious and critical of me. She said of me: ‘Richter? Hmm… As a pianist, he’s good for Rachmaninoff.’ From her lips, that wasn’t a compliment, even though she herself occasionally played Rachmaninoff. She had graduated from the Petrograd Conservatory in the early twenties, at the same time as Vladimir Sofronitsky – a giant of a man who played Schumann and Debussy magnificently and Scriabin like nobody else. By the end of her life Yudina was an outrageous figure, a sort of Clytemnestra, always dressed in black and wearing sneakers for her concerts. She was immensely talented and a keen advocate of the music of her own time: she played Stravinsky, whom she loved, Hindemith, Krenek and Bartók at a time when these composers were not only unknown in the Soviet Union but effectively banned. And when she played Romantic music, it was impressive – except that she didn’t play what was written. Liszt’s Weinen und Klagen was phenomenal, but Schubert’s B-flat major Sonata, while arresting as an interpretation, was the exact opposite of what it should have been, and I remember a performance of the Second Chopin Nocturne that was so heroic that it no longer sounded like a piano but a trumpet. It was no longer Schubert or Chopin, but Yudina."

"During the war she had given The Well-Tempered Clavier at a splendid concert, even if she polished off the contemplative Prelude in B-flat minor from Book Two at a constant fortissimo. At the end of the concert, Neuhaus, whom I was accompanying, went to congratulate her in her dressing-room. 'But, Maria Veniaminovna,' he asked her, 'why did you play the B-flat minor Prelude in such a dramatic way?' 'Because we are at war!' It was typical of Yudina. 'We’re at war!' She absolutely had to bring the war into Bach."

"A fellow student of Rachmaninoff's at the Moscow Conservatory, Lhevinne studied with Safonoff and made his debut in the Emperor Concerto with Anton Rubinstein conducting. As early as 1906 he made his American debut. (That was the year a young man named Arthur Rubinstein came over for the first time.) Lhevinne's remarkable powers were quickly recognized. His tone was like the morning stars singing together, his technique was flawless even measured against the fingers of Hofmann and Rachmaninoff, and his musicianship was sensitive. He was one of the modern romantics who did not have to pull music apart to get its message across. Even when he played Chopin's Etude in thirds and the octave Etude in B minor―his double notes and octaves were fabulous―he never tried to make a stunt of the music. One of his little tricks, the utmost he would permit himself in the way of outward panache, was to take the octave glissandos of the Brahms Paganini Variations prestissimo, staccato and pianissimo. He accomplished this, one guesses, with a rigidly tight wrist that was propelled by sheer nervous impulses. It provided a quasi-glissando that sounds impossible of achievement; but Lhevinne did it, to the amazement of pianists who heard him, and to the utter disbelief of those who didn't."

"I heard Edwin Fischer, who did not mean much to me. I heard another pianist in Berlin who had a big success and I thought he was awful — Mischa Levitzki. Just fingers, and you cannot listen only to fingers. There is a difference between artist and artisan. Levitzki was an artisan."

"In spite of the fact that this is merely a childish fancy, there is a particle of truth in it and I only mentioned it because now, with my tremendous teaching experience, I know too well how often even talented pupils, able to cope with their task, fail to realize with what tremendous manifestation of the human spirit they are dealing. Obviously this does not make for an artistic performance; in the best of cases they stagnate at the level of good workmanship."

"I learned a lot from him, even though he kept saying that there was nothing he could teach me. Music is written to be played and listened to and has always seemed to me to be able to manage without words... This was exactly the case with Heinrich Neuhaus. In his presence I was almost always reduced to total silence. This was an extremely good thing, as it meant that we concentrated exclusively on the music. Above all, he taught me the meaning of silence and the meaning of singing. He said I was incredibly obstinate and did only what I wanted to. It's true that I've only ever played what I wanted. And so he left me to do as I liked."

"He was very musical, an artist. Technique in a pianist never impressed me. I never in my life heard a pianist whom I liked just because of his technique. The moment they start to play very fast I want to go home. Neuhaus was very musical, so I was interested. We played much four-hand and two-piano music. He was a wonderful musician and he introduced me to a great deal of music I had not heard. He played beautifully some late Scriabin sonatas, all of which were new to me. He also analyzed pieces with me. He had studied with Leopold Godowsky in Berlin. I was a provincial boy and was fascinated to hear him describe how Ferruccio Busoni played, how Godowsky played, how Moriz Rosenthal played, how Ignaz Friedman played, how this player and that player sounded. He liked Alfred Cortot best of all."

"As for the piano, I was left to my own devices practically from the age of twelve. As is frequently the case in teachers' families, our parents were so busy with their pupils (literally from morning until late at night) that they hardly had any time for their own children. And that, in spite of the fact that with the favourable prejudice common to all parents, they had a very high opinion of my gifts. (I myself had a much more sober attitude. I was always aware of a great many faults although at times I felt that I had in me something "not quite usual".) But I won't speak of this. As a pianist, I am known. My good and bad points are known and nobody can be interested in my "prehistoric period". I will only say that because of this early "independence" I did a lot of silly things which I could have easily avoided if I had been under the vigilant eye of an experienced and intelligent teacher for another three or four years. I lacked what is known as a "school". I lacked discipline. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; my enforced independence compelled me, though sometimes by very devious ways, to achieve a great deal on my own and even my failures and errors subsequently proved more than once to be useful and educational, and in an occupation such as learning to master an art, where if not all, then almost all depends on individuality, the only sound foundation will always be the knowledge gained as the result of personal effort and personal experience."

"At first we got along very well. Esipova even boasted outside the class that she had pupils who wrote sonatas (I completed Sonata, Op. 1, and played it to Esipova, who took it home and inserted pedaling). But before long trouble began. Esipova’s method of teaching was to try to fit everyone into a standard pattern. True, it was a very elaborate pattern, and if the pupil’s temperament coincided with her own, the results were admirable. But if the pupil happened to be of an independent cast of mind Esipova would do her best to suppress his individuality instead of helping to develop it. Moreover, I had great difficulty in ridding myself of careless playing, and the Mozart, Schubert and Chopin which she insisted on were somehow not in my line. At that period I was too preoccupied with the search for a new harmonic idiom to understand how anyone could care for the simple harmonies of Mozart."

"Prokofiev’s piano music has always played an important role in my own work as both a performer and a teacher. While a student at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, I had the privilege of studying with Lev Oborin. This remarkable pianist premiered both of Prokofiev’s sonatas for violin and piano with David Oistrakh, preparing them under the composer’s guidance. Prokofiev’s works were heard very often in Oborin’s studio, as well as in his own concerts."

"Unlike Beethoven’s sonatas, but like his own song cycles, Schubert’s piano sonatas were not of a nature to inspire the need for public performance for a long time. Sviatoslav Richter’s comprehension of this special intimate nature can explain his interpretation of some of the late sonatas. his very slow tempo in the first movement of the last sonata in B-flat Major (marked only Molto moderato) excited the derision of Alfred Brendel. As I remember, Richter takes almost half an hour for this movement alone, with three more still to go. Brendel was right in thinking the tempo incorrect or inauthentic, but he also appeared not to feel that the intimacy of the work was also essential to its authenticity, and contented himself with a large- scale rendition. The movement is indeed of grand dimensions, but the paradox of schubert’s style here is the astonishing quantity of dynamic indications of pianissimo and even ppp, broken most memorably just before the repeat of the exposition by a single fierce and unexpectedly brutal playing as loudly as possible of the trill of the principal motif, heard so far only very softly (a repeat that Brendel refused to perform, perhaps because the unprepared violence is awkward in a large hall, although paradoxically more convincing in an intimate setting). Richter was an extraordinarily intelligent musician: whenever there was a significant detail in the score, it was always signaled by a reaction in his interpretation, not always, perhaps, the reaction that one would have liked, but no matter."

"It was fabulous! I came especially from Europe. Richter had already played three concerts. I was curious to hear the "great Richter" and went to his concert. He played three pieces by Ravel, simply incredibly! A sound of prodigious beauty! I had never heard before a piano sound like that. It was an other instrument. It brought tears to my eyes. Richter is a gigantic musician with great intelligence. He plays the piano, and the piano responds. He sings with the piano."

"Amid all the tributes that will mark tomorrow’s centenary of the birth of Sviatoslav Richter, none will find the right adjective to go before the noun ‘pianist’. Richter was unlike any pianist before or since, so much so that the very term pianist distorts and belittles the essence of his being."

"If Gilels was in the mainstream tradition of piano playing, Sviatoslav Richter belongs with the great individualists. Alkan? Busoni? Michelangeli? All represented a kind of maverick approach to music and the keyboard, marching to a different drummer. … At the conservatory, his magnetism, his dedication, the aura that always has surrounded him made themselves felt. … Everything he did was different from what other pianists did. His enormous hands could span a twelfth — C to G. A compulsive practicer, he was sometimes known to work twelve hours a day. He would even practice after a recital. Or he might not touch the piano for months. In all things he was different. Neuhaus was struck by the way Richter adapted his mind to that of the composer. "When Richter plays different compositions it seems that different pianists are playing." He developed an enormous repertoire, from Bach and Handel (he is one of the few who plays the Handel Suites) to Prokofieff, Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten."

"Of the Russian pianists I like only one, Richter. Gilels did some things well, but I did not like his mannerisms, the way he moved around while he was playing."

"How many pianists can claim today to be at [Richter's] level? How many are his peers, in the whole history of piano playing? Although I may appear unduly selective, only two names come to mind: Franz Liszt and Feruccio Busoni. The first was born in 1811; the second in 1866, fifty-one years later. And Richter was born in 1915, forty-nine years after Busoni."

"To name just a few other soloists the memorable concerts of which I attended at that time: Arthur Rubinstein, Ida Haendel, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Claudio Arrau, Monique de la Bruchollerie, Annie Fischer, Igor Oistrach. Richter particularly impressed me and I remember a story about one of his concerts in Bucharest. He was scheduled for an evening concert with the Philharmonic. The rehearsal with the orchestra had to take place in the afternoon before the concert, but Richter did not show up. The conductor (I think it was George Georgescu, the music director of the Philharmonic) sent somebody to look for him at his hotel, the Atheneum Palace, next to the concert hall, but he was not there, nor did his wife know where he was. But then she suddenly realized that in his concert he was scheduled to play one of the piano concerts of Liszt. She immediately guessed that he had gone to the cemetery: After playing a Liszt concert for piano and orchestra Richter used to give as a bis Liszt’s Totentanz and to be in the right mood for this piece he used to go before that to the cemetery. And, indeed, there he was."

"Great pianists often have one trait that dominates others: Sergey Rachmaninov’s left-hand thrusts, Alfred Cortot’s rubato, Vladimir Horowitz’s thundering sonority, Glenn Gould’s détaché articulation, and so forth. By contrast, Sviatoslav Richter was something of a stylistic Zelig, a chameleon who couldn’t be pigeonholed. He called himself ‘a normal human being who happens to play the piano’, yet his artistry often provoked contradictory reactions."

"My teacher was influenced by the Russian piano school. For him, Richter and Gilels were the great heroes and they became for me also. Especially Richter. When I was about 20, I couldn’t listen to any other pianist because I was completely obsessed by Richter. He was such a great personality, had the most phenomenal talent, and played so much of the repertoire. When everything worked, it was incredible."

"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."

"Criticism is a very personal affair-no two people can hear alike, neither can their reactions be standardized. I have read much in the press about Richter's performances, and the opinion of distinguished critics has been varied, and quite rightly so. But there seems to have been a crescendo from doubt to approval and admiration, from the early use of words such as 'provincial', 'reprieve for Richter', to 'the supreme artist, whom we had been led to expect'. To me there seems no doubt that Richter is a great pianist. I have heard enough to thrill me. A pianist who can use the piano in every legitimate and musical way-who has song in his heart and rare agility in his fingers and hands, who never attempts to improve music by discovering new effects or counter-melodies-an artist who has a belief in his choice of music, and whose great art is placed in affectionate service to the composer as a first and last aim."

"Richter magnetized me, like he did so many others, and I wouldn't have missed his concerts for anything. I think he communicated more than anyone else complete devotion and sincerity to his art. When I look back, this is what attracted me most to him then, and continues to do so today. I now understand that the strongest element in his magnetic appeal to audiences is his conviction that what he does is absolutely right at that particular moment. It comes from the fact that he has created his own inner world, absolutely complete in his mind, and if you argue with him about anything it's almost no use. He might say "Yes, perhaps you're right, but I just don't feel it that way. This is what I feel and this is the way I play." And that's it. I don't often agree him after the performance, but during it I can see that everything fits together and is completely sincere and devoted, and that wins me over. I'm sure that many people feel exactly the same but, in my case, since I am a practising musician, the fact that I am won over at the time of the performance is extraordinary. In almost all other cases I disagree right there and then at the moment when a performance is taking place! In addition to his many other wonderful qualities Richter is for me the greatest interpreter of Debussy; his playing really has three or four dimensions. It's not just beautiful sounds and beautiful sonorities; I find the imagination behind the sonorities unmatchable. There is a fantastic feeling of spontaneity and of "creating at this moment". In fact, everything is worked out before, but at the same time he always creates "at this moment", and this feeling is marvellous."

"Of all the pianists with whom Prokofiev worked during the Soviet period of his life, he clearly preferred Richter. One of the testaments to this, de scribed here for the first time, is a note in Prokofiev’s handwriting preserved in Richter’s archive. It seems to be a draft of a congratulatory cable—the text lacks punctuation marks—that says, “Warm salute to pianist best in Soviet Union and round whole globe the Prokofievs.”"

"Great pianists usually have one or two facets that dominate their performances in ways that beget adjectives: Horowitzian thunder, Gouldian staccato, Serkin-like nervous energy, Hofmannesque inner-voices, Cortotish rubato. Yet what makes Sviatoslav Richter's playing "Richterian" is not so easy to pin down. The recordings display a multitude of Richters at work. He can be delicate or brusque, withdrawn or optimistic, scrupulous or cavalier, an architect or a miniaturist, a poet or a pedant. One consistent attribute is the pianist's distinctive tone. The beauty and clarity of his sound shimmers with prismatic transparency at all dynamic levels. Chords are always translucent and well balanced. Few pianists can summon the concentration and control that enable Richter, with his hypnotic legato, not only to sustain the unusually slow pace of the Sarabande of Bach's Third English Suite, or the First Movement of the Schubert G Major Sonata, D.894, but also to draw the listener into his sound world."

"Such is our reverence for Mr. Richter's distinguished career that we tend to overlook its ambivalence. He has indeed risen above his Soviet milieu, but he is also anchored to it. A part of him realizes that the instrument is just that: a device used to make something else, namely music. The other part of him surrenders to the primary tenet of the Soviet school: that the instrument dictates the style of performance, and that when music and that style clash, music must adjust. Mr. Richter is an honest man. He reads scores with sober, selfless care. Listen to him play Scriabin etudes, and you will hear a compelling need to tell complex musical stories with absolute clarity. Mr. Richter's uprightness extends to phrasing. No one has better calculated the needed breathing space between musical sentences. He teaches by example. On the opening page of Schumann's "Des Abends," Mr. Richter's withholding of the accented tone ideally describes the clash of moving melody note against a settled harmony beneath. It is a textbook lesson in rubato, sternly delivered. He has the moral courage to sustain the slowest of tempos in the first movement of the Chopin F minor Concerto. The slow movement peels away accumulated sentiment and admires Chopin's marvelous long breaths of movement. When it is time to laugh and be merry -- say, in Schumann's skipping, skittering "Traumes Wirren" -- merriment is not left to chance. If Mr. Richter has ever played a casual passage on the piano, I am unaware of it. Authority rises around his performances like great stone monuments. Mr. Richter does not interpret a piece of music; he looms over it."

"Sviatoslav Richter amazed me by his spontaneity. I emphasize - the spontaneity of Richter's art of the 40's-50's is a unique phenomenon in pianism. For instance, today nothing is heard of spontaneity. And Emil Gilels has always been a mentor for me. I have always felt and still feel taken over by the wonder of Gilels' unique tone. Undoubtedly Richter and Gilels inspired me as magnificent virtuosos by their technique. The more so, as at that time I already had my own considerable technical achievements. In this respect everything was even too good, I would say."

"Why this wave of emotion and excitement? Some attributed it to a great publicity build-up, and one writer objected to the use of the phrase, 'The Pianist of the Century'. 'Which century?' he asked. This was the same critic who labelled Horowitz on his debut as 'the greatest pianist, living or dead'. It is obvious that Richter's gramophone records were his best publicity agent, for these fine recordings have been available for some time and they have so impressed the discerning listener that the message has been passed round-'Here is a great pianist'. Publicity has not suppressed judgment here."

"I am not a complete idiot, but whether from weakness or laziness have no talent for thinking. I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror ... Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart."

"The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter. He doesn't add anything that isn't already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn't dominate the music, but should dissolve into it."

"Richter was like a god to me. I met him in Warsaw in 1991. Because I wanted to watch him rehearsing, I literally lay on the floor behind the stage. When he arrived, he didn't even try the piano. The next day I got a phone call. They needed someone to turn pages for him. In fact a young girl had been chosen to do it, but when Richter knew that he said he couldn't play with a woman beside him because he would find her breasts too inhibiting! Later I discovered he never tried the piano before a concert. He used to say that a concert was a matter of fate. That made a big impression on me and I tend to take a similar approach."

"Since his death, Sviatoslav Richter has emerged as the Grateful Dead of classical pianists. Wherever he played tape recorders followed, and, well, you know the rest. Numerous posthumous releases continue to compound and complicate the pianist’s overstuffed discography. That doesn’t stop Richter mavens from debating the relative merits of his countless recorded versions of this or that work, much as Deadheads pore over concert setlists and vote for their favorite “Dark Star” or “Playing in the Band”."

"Technically he was highly gifted, but also severely limited. His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes accompanied by a variety of figures derived from arpeggios. The enormous popular success some few of Rakhmaninoff's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favour."

"I can respect the artistic aim of a composer if he arrives at the so-called modern idiom after an intense period of preparation…Such composers know what they are doing when they break a law; they know what to react against, because they have had experience in the classical forms and style. Having mastered the rules, they know which can be violated and which should be obeyed. But, I am sorry to say, I have found too often that young composers plunge into the writing of experimental music with their school lessons only half learned. Too much radical music is sheer sham, for this very reason: its composer sets about revolutionizing the laws of music before he learned them himself."

"My dear hands. Farewell, my poor hands."

"Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one – that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process."

"A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music."

"I repeat what I said to you back in Russia: you are, in my opinion, the greatest composer of our time."

"I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me."

"Although it may seem incredible, this cure helped me. At the beginning of the summer I began to compose... New musical ideas began to stir with me-far more than I needed for my concerto. By the autumn I had finished the Adagio and Finale... The Two movements I played... at a charity concert... They had a gratifying success... By the Spring I had finished the first movement of the concerto... Out of gratitude, I dedicated it to Nikolay Dahl."

"The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash."

"It is as a composer that his name will live longest. He was the last of the colourful Russian masters of the late 19th cent[ury], with their characteristic gift for long and broad melodies imbued with a resigned melancholy which is never long absent."

"Especially dangerous on the musical front in the present class war."

"This is how it works — You're young until you're not You love until you don't You try until you can't You laugh until you cry You cry until you laugh And everyone must breathe Until their dying breath."