Is, Gay and Closeted , Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) is the best pianist ever?
Sviatoslav Richter is to many people the pianist of the century.
He had one of the widest repertoires in the business, was a friend of Prokofiev and played at Stalin's funeral in 1953.
Richter was born in Ukraine in 1915, the son of a German professional pianist. He claims he never studied, but simply started playing by launching in to a Chopin Nocturne.
At the age of 15, he worked as an accompanist at the Odessa Opera, where he was often paid in bags of potatoes. He studied with Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory, and at 19 gave his first public recital.
His reputation was made in 1941 with his first performance of one of Tchaikovsky's piano concerti.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | May 26, 2020 6:23 PM
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No, I didn't read the Rasmussen biography published in 2010.
I don't glorify the interpreters, I worship the creators.
Live performances are all luck, beta-blockers and noisy audiences. Recordings are preferable.
But still, as I said before, the creators, the Prokofievs and Tchaikovskies are the ones I worship.
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | August 12, 2019 11:10 PM
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A guy walks into a bar, which is empty except for the bartender and a customer sitting at the end of the bar. In front of the lone customer on the bar is a tiny man about a foot tall pounding away at a tiny piano. "Holy cow, where did he come from?" the new guy asked. The lone drunk said "I made a wish on this magic lamp, just rub it and make a wish." "Can I have a wish?" the new guy asked. "Sure", he said. So the new guy rubs the lamp and says "I wish I had a million bucks", when suddenly falling through the ceiling was hundreds and hundreds of ducks. "Stop, Stop! I didn't wish for a million DUCKS!" The drunk turned around to him and said "You don't think I actually wished for a 12 inch pianist, did you?"
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | August 12, 2019 11:14 PM
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^ Was Richter a short man?
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | August 12, 2019 11:17 PM
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R2
thank you so much.
R3
ducks/ bucks pianist/ penis
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | August 13, 2019 12:08 AM
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Dear OP, you need to tease us with some Richter gossip to keep this thread going.
Did he play the penis as well as the piano?
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | August 13, 2019 9:46 PM
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Was the fight with his wife about a rent boy??
No one knows for sure...
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | August 13, 2019 11:10 PM
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And what about the Plastic Lobster?
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | August 13, 2019 11:22 PM
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We know for sure that Sviatoslav was fighting a sailor (lover?) in a train station in 1952 which led him to break one finger (very Querelle)
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | August 13, 2019 11:31 PM
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"People always spoke of the extremely gifted lyric soprano Nina Dorliac as Slava’s wife, but after his death claims appeared to the effect that they never in fact married.
(Most recently I have heard that after Slava’s death - conceivably for legal reasons in connection with his estate - a wedding ceremony took place posthumously.)
The more time passed, the more generally it also became known that Slava in fact preferred not women but men, with Nina fully aware of that and seeming, as far as I could detect, to have no particular problem with it.
A handsome young Austrian lover of Slava’s, whose relationship extended over a considerable period of time, himself told me of a visit he had spent in Moscow at their invitation, living in the National Hotel, at that time Moscow’s most desirable, and a hotel where one obtained accommodations only through influence of the kind such prominent citizens as Slava and Nina could muster.
I myself had personal occasion to observe this trio more than once, in more than one country, and Nina showed every indication of genuine affection for Slava’s inamorato - and vice versa."
Paul Moor
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | August 13, 2019 11:46 PM
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