Music: Legendary Virtuoso

The world’s most fabled and, internationally, the least widely heard pianist is 44-year-old Russian Sviatoslav Richter. Most Westerners who have managed to attend one of his concerts are convinced that he is one of the greatest pianists now playing. But unlike such famed Russian contemporaries as Pianist Emil Gilels and Violinist David Oistrakh, Richter is not a Communist Party member and has never been allowed to travel to the West. Last week the West traveled to Richter. In Leningrad the touring Philadelphia Orchestra (TIME, June 9) joined him in a performance of Prokofiev’s prickly, sardonic Fifth Piano Concerto.

The orchestra had never played the work, and Richter had only one hour’s rehearsal with the Philadelphia musicians before going on. But orchestra and soloist sailed through the piece with astonishing rapport, immediately sensed by the audience. “All the time,” said Conductor Eugene Ormandy, “electricity was flowing back and forth.” Richter gave Prokofiev’s tongue-in-cheek score a kaleidoscopic range, resisted the temptation to lushness in the concerto’s lyrical passages or to percussive effects in its driving climax. “He tossed it off,” said the Philadelphia’s awed Concertmaster Jacob Krachmalnick, “like walking through a garden.”

Unexpected Tensions. Pianist Richter’s technical mastery is so complete that he makes audiences forget about technique. With his enormous hands, he can play tenths and simultaneously thirds between thumb and forefinger. His bravura passages are majestic with no hint of pounding, his pianissimos a wonder of velvety control. His flexible rhythm gives even the most familiar music unexpected tensions. As he plays, his faunlike face registers emotion like a mass of exposed nerve ends, winces in a spasm of pain when he hits one of his rare wrong notes.

Richter is most at home with Liszt and Schubert, also plays Debussy and Ravel occasionally (“They’re too beautiful to play very often”). Unlike most Soviet artists, he has a wide command of contemporary Western music, e.g., Bartok, Hindemith. All told, he has a repertory of between 25 and 30 complete recital programs, plus a slew of concertos.

Only Clue. Starting as assistant conductor of the Odessa Opera at 16, Child Prodigy Richter decided at 21 to make a career as a pianist. He enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory, made a name for himself in Soviet music when in 1939 he played the premiere performance of Serge Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata. These days he gives as many as 120 concerts a season in Russia and the satellites. He lives with his wife, Lyric Soprano Nina Dorlyak, in a Moscow apartment whose telephone number he is too absent-minded to remember. When he is in the mood, he may sit for 14 hours a day at the piano, but he is also likely to go for months without practicing. He dislikes recording, and as a result the scattered Richter disks available in the U.S. do him scant justice (with the notable exception of some fine Schumann playing he has done for the Decca and Monitor labels). Nevertheless, for most Westerners, recordings will probably remain the only clue to Richter’s art. Although Conductor Ormandy would like to bring him to the U.S., there is no sign yet that Russia is ready to send its finest pianist into the world.