Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations (review)

Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. By Bruno Monsaingeon. Translated by Stewart Spencer. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. [xxxii, 432 p. ISBN 0-691-07438-0. $29.95.]

Sviatoslav Richter, Notebooks and Conversations is partially based on Richter's interviews with Bruno Monsaingeon, a film-maker, for the 1998 documentary, Richter, the Enigma (Warner Music Vision 23029-3). Richter avoided publicity and interviews throughout his career, but Monsaingeon managed to convince him at the end of his life to participate in the film. Perhaps Richter's approval of two earlier films by Monsaingeon about two of his favorite colleagues, David Oistrakh and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the latter being, for Richter, "the greatest of twentieth-century singers" (p. 254), convinced him of Monsaingeon's integrity.

The first half of Notebooks and Conversations consists of an "Introduction" by Monsaingeon and "Richter in His Own Words," a longer section that contains transcripts of interviews with the questions excised to create a first-person narrative. Like the film, it presents a capsule autobiography. The second half, "Notebooks, On Music" presents excerpts from Richter's journals containing impressions of recordings that he listened to and performances he attended. There is a valuable appendix, "A Don Juan of Music, or Richter in Figures," that documents the repertory that Richter performed in around thirty-six hundred concerts given in at least a thousand different places. (With eighty concert programs ready to play at any time, Richter's powers of memory were astounding.)

The book shares some material with Richter, the Enigma but both will be of interest to anyone interested in Richter's ideas and personality. The film is one of the most thoughtful portraits of a musician ever created, one that only rarely slips into the kind of hero-worship that mars many such efforts. We see Richter, a frail old man, speaking about his life in a delicate, resigned manner, often with ironic humor. This is intercut with footage of his piano playing from different times in his career. The playing is notable for its intensity of expression, its steadiness, and, in faster music, its relentless drive. In contradiction to Richter's provocative comment that the two things that he most dislikes are "analysis and power" (p. 65), the defining feature of much of his playing, not to mention his physical presence up until the 1980s, is its power.

The two pianists whose recordings made the greatest impact on listeners during the second half of the twentieth century, in their sheer number and the force of the artistic personality that they reveal, were Richter and Glenn Gould. Although they admired each other, their attitudes toward recording were quite opposed. Gould retired from giving concerts in order to spend time in the recording studio where he enjoyed what was for Richter an artificial and unspontaneous process, that of assembling a musical performance from many edited "takes."

Having collaborated with Gould on a 1981 film of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations (Sony Classical SLV48424, 1994, laser disc; SVD 48424, 2000, DVD), Bruno Monsaingeon is a link between the two pianists. He tells an amusing story in which Gould says of Richter, "He has no recording philosophy and allows records to be released that are a betrayal of his abilities" (p. xii). Gould offers to produce a recording of Richter performing any repertory of his choice. When Monsaingeon conveys Gould's offer to Richter, Richter (after scolding Gould for not playing all of the repeats in the Goldberg Variations) replies, "Tell him that I accept, but on condition that he gives a recital at my festival in Tours" (p. 13). Since Richter was well aware that Gould would never perform in public, this put an end to the discussion.

For Richter, giving concerts was an essential creative activity. His recordings, in contrast with Gould's, are mostly taken from live performances. Some were issued without his approval, some are poorly engineered, and some contain (refreshingly, I think) mistakes and musical miscalculations. No matter, they provide...