Navigating the Richter Discography

[Despina41]

or "Adventures in Websurfing"
or "How I became one of those Recording Nuts I normally make fun of"


So there are bunch of Sviatoslav Richter fans on youtube, and they have mercifully posted not only the entire Bruno Monsaingeon documentary of Richter
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Richter-Enigma-Svyatoslav/dp/B00000I7PQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=video&qid=1215652971&sr=8-2"]http://www.amazon.com/Richter-Enigma-Svyatoslav/dp/B00000I7PQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=video&qid=1215652971&sr=8-2[/ame]
but also every other video clip and numerous recordings he made.

Basically, it's hard to run out of Richter stuff on youtube. If you want to know what pranks he played on the KGB when they trailed him (!), you can find that there, if you want to hear him play Chopin etudes at superhuman speed, you can find that too.

I recently found a performance from 1959 with Kurt Sanderling of the Rachmaninov second concerto. Take some time to listen to this!!

mvt 1
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_suu2h2AQU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_suu2h2AQU[/ame]
the rest of it:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XeeH2SEMRg&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XeeH2SEMRg&feature=related[/ame]

mvt 2
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Out551sfOc&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Out551sfOc&feature=related[/ame]
the rest of it:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bopPMPKtZFM&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bopPMPKtZFM&feature=related[/ame]

mvt 3:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZllhRZf28s"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZllhRZf28s[/ame]
the rest:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1pBSe1ab5E&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1pBSe1ab5E&feature=related[/ame]

Well, I decided that I would like to pay money and own a CD of this performance. I thought, "How hard can it be to find this recording on CD? I know the pianist, the conductor, and the date." Oh, well...how naive I was two weeks ago!

It's true I should have known better. I have a friend who is blind, has perfect pitch, and knows pretty much every recording of everything since he spends his free time buying CDs and writing reviews. He can rattle off various LPs, out of print CDs, and bootlegs of classical, jazz, rock, folk, etc. But even he has to admit: "The Richter discography is so huge and complicated, it scares me."

But I ventured forth undaunted! I said to google, "Richter, Sanderling, Rachmanino*, 1959" and got a dizzying array of responses. It would seem that they recorded the piece on Feb. 18, 1959 and possibly sent it out over the Moscow radio, so "we" (the collective Richter wisdom) think it's a live performance.

By far the most useful source was trovar's Richter discography page
http://www.trovar.com/str/discs/index.html
which listed 30 (I counted!) releases of this performance - some of which have incorrect information listed! Apparently, even the recording companies couldn't keep track of what Richter did and when. No wonder the KGB was trailing him -- "Wait, where are you playing this piece and with whom? We must contact Melodiya immediately..."

But how to choose when there are 30 options?! Luckily, our friends at the classical inkpot did a survey of Rachmaninov piano concerto recordings.
http://inkpot.com/classical/rachpfc2r.html
And they recommended the recent remastering by the Revelation label, which is, natuerlich, out of print now.

Amazon was happy to offer me one of its two used Cds starting at $52.99 ("WHAT!?!"). So I began searching other out of print CD sites.

If you're looking for such sites I can recommend Berkshire Record Outlets.
http://www.broinc.com/search.php
which welcomed me with a "photographic reproduction" of Richter and Rostropovich playing some sonata ("how ironic"), but it did not have the CD.

Parnassus records also has a nice search option, which, for even more ironic reasons, I did not need to use. As you can see if you click on the link, their search page anticipates - how many of the requests it must get on a regular basis?
http://www.parnassusrecords.com/#wantlist
In a big bold box in the middle of the page it asks: "Looking for Sviatoslav Richter items? ...Here is all Sviatoslav Richter Page."

At this point I am wondering, "How smart is this webpage -- or are the waters of the Richter Discography inhabited by such voracious hunters?!"

Luckily, I had left the Amazon webpage up, and it saved me by magically changing from 2 used CDs at $52.99 to 3 used CDs starting at $11.99. "GET IT!!"



Well, I guess that makes me one of those people now.

At any rate, the recording is great, the fuzz is gone, the strings are lush. I almost hesitate to criticize anything Revelation has done. But the cover of the CD is something the likes of which I have never seen before.

WITNESS:
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Rachmaninov-Concerto-piano-Cm-F/dp/B000006BAD"]http://www.amazon.com/Rachmaninov-Concerto-piano-Cm-F/dp/B000006BAD[/ame]
(And the price is still down - get it! )
There is a drawing of three ninenteenth-century people. Are they listening to music? It's unclear. Next to them is a very squished picture of Richter. At first I couldn't even be sure it was him it's so distorted, and it has hair too, so that's always confusing. I wonder what possessed the CD cover designers (or were there any?) to distort a picture of their main artist nearly beyond recognition?
"Ah, here is a lovely line drawing of some nineteenth-century people who time traveled to listen to the Rachmaninov... and then there's some other guy, whatever, we didn't really have enough room for him.."


Oh well! I highly recommend both the CD and the exercise in music hunting. And I think I'm ready to offer a caption for my avatar:

Britten: Wait... which record label released our Mozart sonata performance in 1970?
Richter: Don't ask me - I won't touch that discography stuff with a ten foot pole!

[Philidor]

I didn't realise what a fine looking man he was:

















Showing my ignorance, but what's the KGB connection? He was born in the former GDR (wasn't he?) so did he defect? What was his politics?

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Despina41

But the cover of the CD is something the likes of which I have never seen before.

WITNESS:
http://www.amazon.com/Rachmaninov-Concerto-piano-C... (And the price is still down - get it! )
There is a drawing of three ninenteenth-century people. Are they listening to music? It's unclear. Next to them is a very squished picture of Richter. At first I couldn't even be sure it was him it's so distorted, and it has hair too, so that's always confusing. I wonder what possessed the CD cover designers (or were there any?) to distort a picture of their main artist nearly beyond recognition?
"Ah, here is a lovely line drawing of some nineteenth-century people who time traveled to listen to the Rachmaninov... and then there's some other guy, whatever, we didn't really have enough room for him.."

The cover is fabulously bad. There appears to be an option for customers to upload their own picture. I strongly suggest you get your drawing materials out as you could do infinitely better.

[Despina41]

"Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine!"

[Florestan]

He was a cute kid, wasn't he? Almost makes me broody.

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Philidor

I didn't realise what a fine looking man he was:

hah - "Moonlighting as an organist.."

I think if the half-Russian Richter went through the trouble to pose like this,

.... finish that sentence.

Originally Posted by Philidor

Showing my ignorance, but what's the KGB connection? He was born in the former GDR (wasn't he?) so did he defect? What was his politics?

Well, having seen the documentary I can answer this now. His father was German, mother Russian. (He was pretty pissed off when he told Herbert von Karajan, "I'm German," and HVK replied, "Then I'm Chinese!") He was born somewhere in the Ukraine and spent the war in Moscow studying with Neuhaus and avoiding military service; during this time his father was shot by the Russians, which he didn't even discover until later!
He doesn't say when he was being trailed in the documentary, so perhaps it wasn't technically the "KGB" yet, but what's in an acronym? Politically he just kept his mouth shut, withdrew into his music and hobbies, let the government use him in their propaganda. But they didn't let him leave the soviet bloc until.. 1960? Pretty late.

Here he talks about the trailing, and giving them as much trouble as he could:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8AbTgd6SqY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8AbTgd6SqY[/ame]

And here he debunks some of the myths about his playing at Stalin's funeral. (The truth is wild enough anyway!):
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b5ldPBp9IA&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b5ldPBp9IA&feature=related[/ame]

heh - "You are planting a bomb! We must contact Melodiya immediately..."

[Florestan]

Despina - check out the composer (and musician) lookalikes thread!

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Florestan

The cover is fabulously bad. There appears to be an option for customers to upload their own picture. I strongly suggest you get your drawing materials out as you could do infinitely better.

ah hahah -- you asked for it...

[Florestan]

You drew that? It's great! The drawing has got real style. The expression is excellent.

It's 1,000,000 times better than some random time travelling Victorians who look as though they took a wrong turn in a Dickens novel and ended up on the cover of a CD.

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Florestan

You drew that? It's great! The drawing has got real style. The expression is excellent.

It's 1,000,000 times better than some random time travelling Victorians who look as though they took a wrong turn in a Dickens novel and ended up on the cover of a CD.

I'm actually prouder of the photoshop. I so rarely use Photoshop.

The CD is missing one of those stickers with some music magazine's gushing opinion:
"The BEST performance of Pictures since Richter's Medvezhyegorsk recital of 1949!!"