Sviatoslav Richter Bach

It would be impossible to say enough good about this two-disc set of Sviatoslav Richter playing Bach. Coupling three English suites and three French suites plus a pair of toccatas and a fantasia in live recordings from 1991 and 1992, Richter gives every movement, line, rhythm, and note its own weight and character, but also conveys every detail's critical function in the work as a whole. One could, for instance, characterize his E flat major French Suite as serene, his F major English Suite as playful, or his D minor Toccata as thoughtful, but doing so would not fully capture Richter's fusion of individuality and inevitability.

Stradivarius' 1991 studio and live digital recordings of Sviatoslav Richter are now brought together for a new definitive mid-price luxurious digipak box. Sviatoslav Richter is widely regarded as one of the finest pianists of the 20th century.With a career that began in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, listeners in the West had their first opportunity to hear him through recordings made in the 1950s, and his reputation among classical fans grew quickly. Richter's approach to music is best illustrated by the enormous range of his repertoire. In recital and on recordings he played everything from Bach to Stravinsky to George Gershwin as well as championing unknown or unpopular works he thought deserved the public's attention.

Good News - the legal dispute over the ownership of Sviatoslav Richter's Eurodisc recordings has finally been resolved, and Sony is releasing them in a nice 14 CD box.Recorded in Salzburg, Vienna and Munich between 1970 and 1983.A joint production of the small German label Eurodisc (Ariola) and the Soviet giant Melodiya.These are among the last of Richter's studio recordings - after this, most of his commercial recordings were recorded in concert.

A generous and adventurous collection of piano concertos played by the Russian Giant of the Keyboard, Sviatoslav Richter. Next to standard concert repertoire some novelties, like the Franck, Britten, Berg and Hindemith works. Famous conductors like Evgeny Svetlanov, Kyril Kondrashin and the recently deceased Rudolf Barshai (his favourite conductor).

The Teldec recordings of the legendary pianist who rarely went into the recording studio so most of his recordings are live at concerts.

From the irresitably forceful opening bars of the English Suite's prelude to the throbbing repeated octaves of the D minor concerto, Richter shows why many of Bach's works are ideally suited to the piano. The Bach concerto is often regarded as a student piece, or relegated to refined performances on the harpsichord. Not here – the bookend movements are as maniacal, pulsing and driving as the best of John Coltrane or Prokofiev. The CD is worth it just for those movements, but Richter's treatment of the English Suite is equally enlightening, especially the Prelude and Gavotte.

Every Richter fan will want to hear his performances of four of Bach's English Suites (6) taped in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow on May 20, 1991. Recorded near the end of his career, they are Richter at his most deeply affecting and deeply human. Richter was 76 when he gave these performances, but they reveal no lack of power, no technical weakness, and certainly no want of intensity. But at this point in his life and always in this repertoire, Richter has restrained his virtuosity to concentrate on Bach's linear counterpoint played with such complete independence of the fingers that every line is clear, cogent, and compelling. But more than anything, Richter's lines are voices, all singing their own lines in effortless and ineluctable ensemble with each other and thereby creating a whole infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. In these late performances, Richter is at his most lyrical, with each voice given its own supple phrasing and its own sweet tone. While being quintessentially pianistic, Richter's performance of Bach's music is essentially the sound of Richter singing. Great Hall's sound is raw and honest. ~ James Leonard, Rovi Performances

This Deutsche Grammophon compilation is an excellent celebration of the talents of the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter. In keeping with his own approach, the choice of music demonstrates that there is much more to piano virtuosity than the ability to play fast and loud. He could do this, of course, but here we also experience his phenomenal control over the `colour' of each note (the Bach D minor prelude) his poise (the Debussy Estampes) and his intellectual grasp of structure (the Chopin F minor Ballade which also superbly demonstrates his ability to make the piano roar, whisper or sing).