Interview by Willem Boone (2009)
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V I R S A L A D Z E
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V I R S A L A D Z E
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WB: The great Sviatoslav Richter has said about your Schumann playing that you were the best Schumann pianist! You must have been pleased with such a compliment?
EV: He could be quite moody, this may have been his spontaneous feeling when he said this, but yes, of course, I greatly appreciate his opinion!
WB: What do you think of his Schumann playing?
EV: He has done a few things that are simply genius, e.g the Piano Concerto, the Etudes Symphoniques, the Allegro Appassionato (with orchestra, WB), but I actually liked everything he played.
WB: In the book by Bruno Monsaingeon, Richter wrote that he invited you to come to his place to listen to recordings. He wrote about his own recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G major K 453 that you were postive, whilst he hated his own playing. How did that work, did he ask you for your opinion?
EV: I still haven’t read that book, I have been reticent, since it may be too close.. He was always very hard on himself, so one couldn’t blame him for being hard on others!
WB: How honest were you to him when his own playing was concerned?
EV: I told him, as in the case of Mozart’s Concerto K 453, that I enjoyed his reading. When I hear things I don’t like, I say nothing!
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WB: Which pianists impressed you most with Schumann’s music?
EV: Annie Fischer, Maria Grinberg, Sofronitzky, Backhaus sometimes. Samuel Feinberg is unknown, but he played a wonderful Humoreske. Lipatti was great in the Piano Concerto, I like Horowitz in the Kinderszenen, among the living pianists, I would mention Lupu.
WB: I’d like to ask you another question about Richter. He had a huge repertoire, yet sometimes his decisions were difficult to understand, for instance he never played all of the Chopin Preludes and he always left out two of the eight Fantasiestücke by Schumann!
EV: There is nothing I can do about that, what can I say? He also said he would never do the Kreisleriana, since his teacher Heinrich Neuhaus had played them so well.
WB: Richter didn’t play the First Concerto by Brahms, which you just performed, either since he disliked the last movement. That is another rejection that is hard to believe...
EV: I don’t understand that either, because I like that movement very much!
WB: What was your relation to Richter? Were you friends with him?
EV: No, we weren’t friends, but it was a great honour to be able to spend some time with him. Natalia Gutman and Oleg Kagan were closer to him, although I have known Richter since my childhood.
WB: Which live performances by Richter do you remember best?
EV: Moussorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the 6th and 7th Piano Sonatas by Prokofiev, Beethoven’s last Piano Sonatas and his Third Piano Concerto, Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Etudes Symphoniques, Ludis Tonalis by Hindemith, song recitals with Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and many chamber music works. The recording of the Tschaikofsky Piano Trio is simply fantastic, it’s the best performance I know of this work. The last time I was at his festival in Tours (France), I played Shostakovitsj’s Second Piano Trio with Victor Tretjakov and Natialia Gutman and Richter was sitting in the audience.
WB: Did he still play himself at the time?
EV: No, he had stopped just a month before.
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