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Sviatoslav Richter’s Study
Whether he’s playing Bach or Shostakovich, Beethoven or Scriabin, Schubert
or Debussy, each time he makes the
composer come alive, resurrects him,
as it were, each time he becomes totally
immersed in the composer’s vast,
unique world. And all this is imbued
with the ‘Richter spirit’, his remarkable
talent for delving into the innermost
depths of the music!
Heinrich Neuhaus
Richter’s study, which he used to call the cupboard
room, is full of cases and cupboards containing
books, records of his performances, scores, concert
evening dress, and presents from friends and
admirers.
The secretaire next to Picasso’s Dove contains
the manuscript of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata
No. 9 with a dedication to Sviatoslav Richter. Here
too is a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s Krokhotki signed by
the author. And over the secretaire is a contra-relief
of Boris Pasternak by the sculptor Sarra Lebedeva.
The wooden figure of John the Baptist to the
right of the secretaire is a momento of the music festival in Touraine, with a small etude by Martiros
Sariyan above it. Then there are the books. Richter
was a real bookworm: Thomas Mann, Turgenev,
Pushkin, Chekhov (his favourite story was «Fear»),
Blok, Pasternak, Voloshin, Veresayev, Balzac,
Maurois, Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky,
Dickens, Bulgakov and Gogol are just a few of the
names you will find on the shelves in the study.
He was particularly fond of Proust. According to
N.D.Zhuravlyova, rather than waiting for a Russian
translation of the novel Time Regained, Richter
read it in German. In July 1997 Eliso Virsaladze
read him Maeterlinck at Nikolina Gora. The last
book he read for himself was Turgenev’s Fathers
and Sons.
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