Jed Distler on Sviatoslav Richter

“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 He can be delicate or brusque, withdrawn or optimistic, scrupulous or cavalier, an architect or a miniaturist, a poet or a pedant.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.”

“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”.”

“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.”