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.

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.

A collection of 66 tracks and approximately 4 hours and 6 minutes of masterpieces by the famous pianist Richter. Schumann: Piano Sonata No. 2-3rd Movement, "Butterfly" from "The Clown at the Vienna Carnival", Handel: Keyboard Suite No. 2, Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 31-2nd Movement (Oleg Kagan), Mozart/Grieg: Piano Sonata No. 16 (2 Pianos) (Leonskaya), Beethoven: Violin Sonata "Spring"-2nd and 3rd Movements, and more.

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).

The name of Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) appears at the head of virtually everyone’s shortlist of the world’s great pianists. In the West, the legend began, then gathered force, during the 1950s, when it was rumoured that there was a pianist in Russia who caused even such formidable colleagues as Emil Gilels to exclaim in awe and amazement. Expectations were raised still higher when Julius Katchen and later Lazar Berman claimed that Richter was, quite simply, a nonpareil, a pianist whose titanic powers forbade even whispered comparisons.

Sviatoslav Richter is an all-around performer who has tackled musical repertoire from Bach to Webern, but has not been a performer identified with the Viennese classical composers. Yet Richter’s Beethoven repertoire is enormous, and he has performed nine concertos and nine sonatas by Mozart as well as various works of lesser proportions and many violin sonatas. At the present time it is easier to see the Beethoven-Richter relationship relatively clearly. We do not know if Richter took into account the fact that Beethoven had been an avid reader of Homer, but this performance of the Hammerklavier is, without any doubt, epic.

A collection of 66 tracks and approximately 4 hours and 6 minutes of masterpieces by the famous pianist Richter. Schumann: Piano Sonata No. 2-3rd Movement, "Butterfly" from "The Clown at the Vienna Carnival", Handel: Keyboard Suite No. 2, Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 31-2nd Movement (Oleg Kagan), Mozart/Grieg: Piano Sonata No. 16 (2 Pianos) (Leonskaya), Beethoven: Violin Sonata "Spring"-2nd and 3rd Movements, and more.

This 14-CD collection brings together Richter's great recordings for the Eurodisc label with 10 recordings newly remastered from the original analogue tapes, many of which had been out of print for years. It includes the legendary Bach The Well-Tempered Clavier recordings as well as Beethoven s Sonatas Nos. 3 and 4 and Tchaikovsky s The Seasons.