The first time I heard him play was at the Moscow Conservatory in
May 1957, and he opened his programme with the last of Schuberts
sonatas. Its a very long sonata, one of the longest ever written,
in fact, and Richter played it at the slowest tempo Ive ever
heard. I think at this point its appropriate to confess... Im not
really addicted to most of Schuberts music. I find myself unable
to come to terms with the repetitive structure, and I get very
restless and squirm when I have to sit through one of the longer
Schubert essays. What happened was that, for the next hour, I was
in a state that I can only compare to a hypnotic trance. All my
prejudices about Schuberts repetitive structures were forgotten.
Musical details which Id previously considered ornamental were
given the appearance of elements. In fact, I can remember
many of those details to this day. It seemed to me that I was
witnessing a union of two supposedly irreconcilable qualities.
Intense analytical calculation revealed through a spontaneity
akin to improvisation. And I realized at that moment, as I have
on many subsequent occasions while listening to Richters
s, I was in the presence of one of the most powerful
communicators the world of music has produced in our time (Glenn
Gould). Firma Melodiya has compiled its first album for the 100th
anniversary of Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter from works by Franz
Schubert, a composer whose music accompanied Sviatoslav Richter
throughout his artistic career (he learnt the Wanderer Fantasie
before he entered the conservatory, and the Sonata in five parts,
D. 459, was the last piece that Richter worked on in his country
house at the end of July 1997 and hoped to play during the
forthcoming concert season). The set includes complete phonograms
of the concertos of 02.05.1978 (for the 90th anniversary of
Heinrich Neuhaus) and 18.10.1978 (for the 150th anniversary of
Franz Schuberts death), encores from the concert of 03.05.1978
(the basic programme was similar to that of 02.05.1978), and also
the H-Dur sonata (from the concert of 08.06.1979, its second part
was dedicated to Sergei Prokofievs music (pleased refer to Mel CD
10 01677) and the c-moll sonata from the concert of 06.10.1971.
Ever meticulous about the issues of form of a piece (in
particular, he would rigorously perform all the repetitions
indicated by the author), Sviatoslav Richter not only performed
Schuberts short pieces (landlers, écossaises) in succession, in
the order specified by the composer, but after choosing the most
congenial of them compiled peculiar miniature suites, sometimes
making any other piece adjacent to them. The examples are the
suites from the A-Dur piece and four landlers of 02.05.1978, and
the suites played as an encore at the concert of 18.10.1978. A
listener may also pay attention to the evolution of the form of
the E minor sonata, D. 566. The sonata was not finished by
Schubert as a whole multi-movement work and is actually a set of
individual pieces connected with tonal correlations, a figurative
structure and the time when they were composed. In 1953, Richter
performed a single-movement version of the sonata. However, later
on in the 1950s, he performed a two-movement version (a
comparison with Beethovens sonata, Op. 90, inevitably comes to
mind). Afterwards, the form grew larger when Richter added the
third movement (Scherzo. Allegro vivace), and the fourth one by
the 1970s (Rondo. Allegro molto. D. 506) thus performing the
version of Paul Badura-Skoda. The sonata is featured in this set
twice, as a three- and four-movement version.