Robert Brouwer ("Turning the pages")

16 June, 1965. Aldeburgh

But an interesting footnote is that thirty years later I heard Sviatoslav Richter, the famous Russian pianist in Tokyo, where he played a Mozart concerto which contained a very special cadenza. 1]

And in the intermission, I did something I usually I don’t do. I went backstage and there was Richter in his shirt sleeves who then said, ‘do come in because nobody talks to me’. So I said ‘look, whose cadenza was this’ and he said ‘come inside and I’ll show you’. And there he showed a handwritten score and the notes leapt at me off the page because this was Benjamin Britten’s handwriting which I recognised at once. Richter was a bit crestfallen. He said, ‘well, I thought I was the only one who new this and here you can recognise this’. I said ‘well, I’ve had his handwriting before me for two hours thirty years ago and I’ll never forget it’. So this is how simple things will have consequences which are at least for me worth remembering. And it also marked I think a proper end to my autograph collecting and my page turning.