For the 100th anniversary of Sviatoslav Richter, Firma Melodiya presents its arguably biggest project in its semicentennial history. The name of Sviatoslav Richter is inscribed in gold in the history of music.
He was not just more than a pianist, he was even more than a musician. An owner of composing, conducting, artistic, directing and acting gifts, a connoisseur of literature, arts and philosophy, with a will of iron he made all his gifts serve the art of pianism. An artist of planetary scale, as of the critics put it, Richter was like that in everything in his unbounded repertoire that he never stopped replenishing until his last years, in his priestly frenzy of hourslong rehearsals, in the geography and number of performances, over 3 500 concerts in 770 places of the world for 55 years of his musical career!
the set includes plenty of exclusive, previously unreleased recordings that will make the hearts of even most erudite connoisseurs and collectors rejoice. Most of the featured recordings are broadcasts from the concerts played in Moscow in 1962 to 1983. However, the exceptions are of special interest. These are:
one of the first Sviatoslav Richter s extant concert programmes Schubert s last sonata and Mussorgsky s Pictures at an Exhibition (1949); recording ofthe concert with Nina Dorliak in Bucharest, in 1958; recordings of "home" rehearsals with Nina Dorliak. Alexander Scriabin s Prometheus, on which he plays a "modest" piano part in an orchestra, is evidence of Richter s extremely broad musical interests, or the recordings of J.S. Bach s ensemble concertostogether with students of the Moscow Conservatory.
The set comes with a hardback booklet in four languages (Russian, English, French, and German), each set is placed in an exclusive bag.
Booklet includes texts written by Dmitri Bashkirov and Vladimir Ashkenazy. The set is released in a limited run of one thousand copies and each box has an individual collection number acknowledged with a Certificate of Authenticity.