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Sviatoslav Richter Live in the 1950s: Reviews
From "American Record Guide"
...In his younger days, Richter's repertory
and style were more those of a concert virtuoso
than the thoughtful end deeply probing musi
cian he became. But even then, he never dis-
played his prodigious technical skills merely for
their own sake; he always used them, with utter
naturalness and total commitment, to make
wonderfully romantic and very beautiful
music. Here, for instance, is a 1955 perfor
mance of Schumann's Humoresque (which he
recorded only once again, a year later)--that
strange piece, with its host of ideas elbowing
each other aside from beginning to end--that
is brilliant, passionate, and deeply moving. His
ferocious version of Prokofiev's thorny Sonata
7 is wholly convincing in musical terms. In this
early version of Pictures, he does not yet have
the mastery of style and content of his 1958
Sofia performance, but the finale ('The Great
Gate of Kiev') is a glorious triumph of sonority
piled on sonority. In the Tchaikovsky Concerto,
the orchestra is pretty awful and the first movement is curiously disjointed, but he ends the
piece with an astonishing burst of pyrotechnics. The Rachmaninoff Preludes are played
with dark passion, intensity, and a remarkable
range of tone and.color. And so on, with other
pleasures too numerous to mention.
The sound on these discs is not great, and
there is a fair amount of audience noise, but
neither problem is so bad that it interferes
seriously with our appreciation. They are
essential for Richter fans, fascinating for those
interested in following the development of a
great artist, and very rewarding for everyone
else who loves to hear beautiful music superbly played.
MORIN
American Record Guide
May/June 1997
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