The wonderful person and superb painter I married when I was very young, Alex Segal, has been telling me since we met about his musical idol, the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, and his portrait of Richter has hung for years at the entrance to Marcel Proust Support Group Headquarters.
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Richter's artistry is well known throughout the world. The Soviets were so
proud of him that he was allowed to tour as much as he desired. He came a
few times to the United States, beginning in the early 60's, playing in
several cities. Unfortunately, during a tour in the early '70s, his
performance was heckled by angry demonstrators protesting certain policies
of the Soviet government. This bizarre rudeness so annoyed Richter that he
refused to perform in the United States again. |
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We do have hundreds of records, tapes and CDs available of Richter's work, a treasure, playing of an impeccable, unmannered profundity. This issue of PST has been produced largely while listening to the new Richter Bach CD (Sonate, Toccata, Fantasie, Capriccio, Duette, Italianische Konzert) a rare import on the German Classics Live label; of all composers I know, I find Bach most conducive to thought, and Richter's Bach is strong, for strong thought. |
I've always known that Richter has a particular attraction for French culture; for the last 30 years, even under the thumb of the USSR, he has produced an annual summer music festival in Tours, in the rambling, medieval Grange de Mesley. When Richter found this place in 1963, it was used as a storage place for corn grown in the fields of Touraine, and it remains, between the annual events, an agrarian storehouse. Peformers from around the world have played with Richter there to international audiences.
Recently, in the liner notes of two Classics Live releases, the Bach and another with works by Chopin and Scriabin, we've come to find out that Richter, besides being one of the world's most revered musicians, is extremely knowlegeable about French literature, and particularly a fan of Proust. In the liner notes to the Bach CD I found a charming piece entitled "On Concert Tour With Maestro" by Konstanze Hortnagel.
"We covered large distances," she writes, "from Constance to Kiel, using bumpy cobble-stone roads.. . Time was ours and our tempo was the leisurely one of the '30s. Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann were our companions..."
The second telling CD, which includes four Chopin Polonaises and four works by Scriabin, also has reference to Richter's knowledge of Proust in the liner notes. The author, George Schneider, published a book about Richter, Sviatoslav Richter, eine Reise durch Sibiren in 1992, and the liner notes culled from his introduction tell us this: "He is familiar with the most significant pages of the world's literature. His knowledge, or even more, his understanding of French literature (Montaigne, Racine, or Proust) even leaves a French discussion partner dumbfounded..."
Very recently, Phillips produced a major 22-CD set of previously unreleased Richter performances (not the greatest, perhaps, but a must-have for Richter fans.) The set is accompanied by a beautiful book of photos taken at Tours, of the Grange, and of Richter playing there. By curious coincidence, this book was photographed by a person named Gerard Proust.
...his playing is that of so fine a pianist that one is no longer aware that the performer is a pianist at all, because his playing has become so transparent, so imbued by what he is interpreting, that one no longer sees the performer himself--he is simply a window opening upon a great work of art.
-The Guermantes Way
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P Segal |
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