In Bruno Monsaingeon’s film ‘Richter:
The Enigma’, Richter revealed to the
camera his dislike of America and his
feeling of panic when there. He rarely
felt that he played well, and this anxiety
can be heard in his early Carnegie Hall
recital from the breakthrough tour of
America in 1960 (‘Richter Rediscovered’).
By 1965, the year of
these Chopin Scherzi performances, Richter
seems much more comfortable, and recordings
from the series of recitals he gave
in April and May show him to be at the
absolute peak of his form, combining
the wild elemental power of his youth
with some of the more poetic and deeply
reflective qualities that had begun
to emerge. Try to hear the extraordinary
Liszt Sonata from 18 May 1965, once
available on Philips and now on Palexa.
Here, in the four Chopin
Scherzi, we finally have all the visceral
excitement and passion missing in the
1977 studio recordings (on Regis), masterly
and refined though those are. Twelve
years earlier, timings are quicker for
all the Scherzi, though that isn’t to
say that Richter plays faster throughout.
What he does is to highlight more obviously
the many-sidedness of these pieces,
by playing the Presto sections much
faster, and allowing the slow meditative
moments all the time in the world. Nowhere
is this more evident than in the 1st
Scherzo in B Minor, whose furious opening
assault (truly Presto con fuoco) transforms
into a brooding, heartfelt cry, in Richter’s
hands full of expression and freedom,
before igniting again. Later, in the
molto piu lento, Richter manages, as
only he can, almost to suspend time,
creating a feeling of motionlessness.
Listen how, in the
C# Minor Scherzo, he layers the sound,
the descending rippled accompaniments
cascading like a fountain; a reminder
of the great colourist that he was.
Harold C. Schonberg
commented in his review of the concert
that these were "interior"
performances. Yes. But that’s only part
of the story. What is extraordinary
to this reviewer is the way in which
the playing at times takes on an intimate
reverence, full of poetry and the darkest
solitude, at other times (the closing
bars of the B Minor and C# Minor Scherzi
for example) a declamatory and even
openly virtuosic approach, one which
is a reminder that Richter could still
play the showman of his youth.
Occasionally one misses
the extra breadth of the studio recordings,
as in the opening of the B flat minor
Scherzo, which sounds angry and forceful
in 1965 and grandly Olympian in 1977,
though generally the later accounts
feel somewhat too removed and controlled
by comparison.
The other performances
are all fine, with the Barcarolle and
Waltzes available (in better sound)
on Orfeo, and some of the Mazurkas a
first release, but it is the Chopin
Scherzi which you will not want to be
without, despite the muffled and slightly
disorted sound.
Alex Demetriou
Sviatoslav Richter (Piano) 
for
details
