Dezsô Ránki
Performances and Recordings
[..]
Do you collect his recordings?
Yes, systematically, and I try to get hold of any available discographies too. There are 8 or 10 live concert recordings of some pieces, and you have to listen to all of them; there is something different in every one. He had a huge repertoire, something like 180 hours of music, an incredible amount. What is also interesting and—I think—sets an example, is that he never recorded "collected works". He never played, say, all the sonatas of so-and-so, or the all this, that or the other by anybody. He formed his own special relationship with each and every piece, and if he didn't feel drawn to a particular piece of music, he didn't play it. As a result, there are some masterpieces even, which were not part of his repertoire.
[..]
There are some composers, however, whose work was present throughout his whole career, for example Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Schumann.
Yes, especially Schumann. The way he played Schuman was quite unique. It wasn't the straightforward, jolly, catchy style, which is the usual way people play Schumann. It was intense, with wild contradictions. His interpretation conveyed a great tranquility, which some people think doesn't suit Schumann; but the way he played it was a tremendous thrill, and he made it credible.
He didn't play Schubert in the conventional way either, did he?
No, I suppose the same could be said about everything he played, but with Schubert there's a lot of scope. Schubert's musical world is as wide and open as the sea, you can become completely immersed in it, and whatever you do in it, you're not squeezing anybody else out; there's room for everybody in it.
What about Chopin?
He didn't play as much Chopin as Schumann or Schubert: the Four Scherzos, the Four Ballads and a few of the Preludes. It was also typical of him that he didn't play all the 24 Preludes, but rather a selection of the ones that he liked best, I suppose. That meant he didn't follow the usual order, either. The same goes for his approach to performing the Etudes.
It was the opposite with Debussy's second volume of Preludes, which he played in its entirety in Budapest, and in places such as Moscow, Aldeburgh, Spoleto, Florence, Prague.
That is perhaps the only set of works—apart from the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier—which he ever performed in concert in their entirety. In the case of other serial works he only played a selection, chosen according to his own idiosyncratic criteria.
[..]
This is the same kind of problem as whether it is acceptable to publish a writer's private papers.
Maybe not quite the same.
I think it's similar. When the writer wrote his letters he was not concerned about whether they might be published later. Richter played pieces of music, and he decided which could be released on record, and which he didn't want released. Thus to release the latter is to go against his wishes. There are important recordings, however, such as his debut concerts in New York, which he always considered very bad, but which were incredible concerts. Now that, unfortunately, he is no longer around to protest, it is highly likely that sooner or later these will be released too. The New York recordings were in fact released at the time, shortly after the concerts took place, but in a very limited edition, and have never been re-released since. These are regarded as rarities by collectors, and they fetch large sums of money when they change hands. I myself have a New Zealand edition of one of these concerts on record. Richter himself always asserted that he had an awful time in New York, that he was dreadfully agitated and played abominably; but if you know the recordings, you know what a great thing it would be if they were re-released in a decent edition.
Future generations will only know Richter from records.
I think the fact that new Richter recordings are appearing in succession and even the fifth or sixth concert recording of the same piece is selling, shows that Richter's charisma carries even on record. He is one of the very few—maybe four or five—personalities who are instantly recognizable on record, and whom you can listen to over and over again and find something new every time. Besides Richter, I mean people like Furtwängler, Callas, Celibidache.
There are vast differences between performances by Richter of the same piece at different times. It's strange, one's first impression is that there are great differences in tempo. In 1973 he played Schubert's Sonata in C minor at a seemingly much much slower tempo than he had played it fifteen years previously. But if you measure the length of the two versions on the radio recordings, they turn out to be almost the same. The same applies to his recordings of Bach in Moscow in 1948 and in Bonn in 1991; the tempo is virtually the same in both, and yet the two performances are completely different.
I don't think it was simply a question of changes in character or attitude, which had taken place in the long interval which elapsed between the two performances. Richter was always profoundly influenced by the hall he was playing in and the
instrument he was playing on. He would strike the notes differently, or mould the whole tone of the piece differently,
depending on the piano he was playing
on, or if he was performing in a small room as opposed to a vast stadium. Once, in Japan, he played in a concert hall with walls of glass, and the effect was as if he were playing in the middle of a forest, surrounded by beautiful trees and birds. I am sure that this affected him deeply; he loved it there, and felt he played "naturally"…
[..]
Dezsô Ránki,
is an international concert pianist.
An interview with Márta Papp, of Magyar Radio
