Richter: The Authorized Recordings: Mozart [Box set]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer), Sviatoslav Richter (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Sviatoslav Richter
• Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Audio CD (March 14, 1995)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Philips
• ASIN: B00000416V
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #227,144 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

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5.0 out of 5 stars Richter's Inimitable Mozart..., January 19, 2011

By 

Sébastien Melmoth (Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Richter: The Authorized Recordings: Mozart (Audio CD)

Richter's Inimitable Mozart...
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Life is a dicey gamble.

People are born into a specific space-time and family circumstances which influence the entire course of their lives: sometimes people can rise above their family circumstances; but no one can evade their earthly space-time.

And so the brilliant artist that was Sviatoslav Richter was both blessed and cursed in his space-time.

Born in Ukraine to German immigrants at the inception of the Russian Soviet political-economic system, his life was largely spent as a dutiful Soviet artist of the people--which means, it was his workaday job--nay, his duty to the State, to perform music for the people at any time, anywhere and everywhere behind the `Iron Curtain'.

The Scripture says, `Train children in the Way, and even when they are old they will not turn from it' (Prov. 22:6): this effect was not lost on Richter who learned (the hard way) to perform before a `live' audience in any venue on any instrument he was provided.
Even after gaining his freedom in later years Richter continued his `live' performances: it appears the Soviet idea that studio recording was bourgeois, counterrevolutionary, and anti-proletariat was so ingrained in him that even in old age he couldn't or wouldn't change his artistic method.

And this is the rub: one never knows what kind of recorded sound we'll get with a `live' Richter recording. We know that we'll always get brilliantly incisive revelatory pianistic artistry with Richter; but it's a gamble just how intrusive his audience will be on any given date.

Ergo (for example) his 1958 Sofia recording is insufferable; but at these later dates featured on this 2CD issue, digitally remastered, and largely edited of applause, these Austrian, Italian, and German audiences are fairly well-behaved with little coughing: bottom line, these Philips `Authorized Recordings' are about the best (read `cleanest') sounding Richter recordings available.

In later years as Richter continued to concertize, performances were simply billed as `a Richter date' without programmes, leaving the Master free to play what he liked as he felt at the space-time.
Curiously, in these later years we see Richter electing to perform evermore Mozart.

Richter's way with Mozart is categorically sublime: razor-sharp and deeply probing.

Although he didn't compile an entire Mozart cycle, Richter's Mozart corpus is an exquisite foil to the unusually heavy late-Brahmsian interpretations of Arrau, and to the abbreviated effervescent realizations of Glenn Gould.
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re-released as `Richer the Master' series
Richter the Master, Vol. 2: Mozart
combine with the wonderful 1989 London performance
Richter in London: Mozart
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