On Schubert (from 'Musiker im Gespräch)

'Slava, why did you take such a slow tempo?' Yet I do not even play molto moderate but in fact only moderate. The others always play allegro moderate or simply allegro. The first Schubert work I played was the Wanderer Fantasy when I was still a student and then later the Sonata in D major, D850. I had once heard it from a woman student, terribly long and tedious, so that it was unendurable. I then said to myself, 'But it cannot be possible for Schubert to be this tedious', and I decided to play the sonata myself. What happened was what always happens with me: 'When are you going to give your next concert?' I was asked about that time. 'In twenty days,' was my reply; and on being questioned about my programme I added, 'Let's see now - Schubert among other things, the Sonata in D major'.

Then I began to study it, and at the concert it went marvellously. Later I took up the Sonata in G major; it is the one I love most, more than the D major. Then came the big A minorSonata and the little A minor and the little A major (I don't want to play the big A major) after that the C minor, the unfinished C major, the B major Sonata, the E minor Sonata and the big B flat. I think altogether I have ten Schubert sonatas in my repertoire. 

E minor, D 666/506; B major, D 575; F minor, D 625; A major, D 664; A minor, D 784; C major, D 840; A minor, D 845; D major, D 850; G major, D 894; C minor, D 958; B flat major, D 960.  11 sonatas by Schubert. The G major sonata Richter only played once in the West - 27 September 1977 Aldeburgh. 

As far as I know I introduced these works in Russia, up till then they had not been played in our country. They were immediately very well received by the public. On my first appearance in Paris, in 1961, I first played a mixed programme of Brahms, Scriabin and Debussy *; in the second concert I played Schubert: the unfinished C major Sonata and the little Allegretto in C minor, and in the second part the B flat Sonata. And the Parisians understood it at once. The audience in Paris reacts like a thermometer; at the same time it is not primarily musical. Nor do I really like an audience that is too musical. In Germany, for example, the audience is a little too educated musically, and then it easily loses its spontaneity. A concert is then no longer an adventure, but almost i lecture. Many pianists decline to perform unknown works. But I cannot always play the same pieces that everybody knows. For this reason I no longer want to hear the Appassionata at all; for many years I have no longer played it. I last played it in 1960, in New York, 9 and in fact very badly. I was thoroughly ill at the time. I found everything horrible on this first tour in the USA. Initially I found this other hemisphere psychologically and geographically horrible. I was afraid and did not know what I was afraid of. Before the second recital, consisting of a Haydn sonata and Prokofiev, a doctor gave me a tranquillizer. When I went on to the stage and played, and struck a wrong note, it all seemed funny to me. Unfortunately they recorded and published precisely these concerts. Later I recorded the Appassionatoa again in America, in the studio; it is not particularly good. I regard my Appassionata recording from a concert in Moscow as much better. In the case of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy which, as I say, I had already played as a student with Neuhaus, it was only very late in life that I succeeded in acquiring the freedom it needs. One must not play it academically; one has to take risks, as with scarcely any other work. Schubert not only had a great influence on Liszt but in my opinion had an effect, above all through the Lied, on Wagner, particularly in Die Walküre but also in Tannhauser. Of Weber's sonatas I play only one, that in D minor. I have also always wanted to play the first, the C major, but so far have not got round to it". 

The A flat Sonata I do not care for so much, nor the one in E minor; in the latter I find the first theme so lachrymose. One should, of course, play the Weber sonatas. Unfortunately one hears them very seldom.