John Russell: memories (Rosamond Bernier)

One of the great Russian artists who was finally allowed to go abroad was the pianist Sviatoslav Richter. John (Russel, Rosemond's husband) described his debut in London in July 1961. “He made an unforgettable and distinctly curious impression. He had a mighty head, mighty shoulders, mighty legs and mighty coattails. He had compact but very large hands with which he dug deeply into the keyboard when the music asked for what he called 'a singing sonority" .↪link New York Times 1999 I got to know Richter, Slava, as we called him by then, in the 1970s and 1980s, when he came every summer to a little festival he had founded not far from Tours in the Loire valley. As the guest of a music publisher friend of John's, Francis Van de Velde, he had come across a noble thirteenth-century tithe barn the size of a small cathedral. Richter saw at once it had enormous possibilities, and he guessed the acoustics would be perfect. They were: what came to be called the Fêtes Musicales en Touraine opened there in June 1964 and continued to draw a full house (or a full barn) of music lovers, not only from the region, but from all over France. Richter chose all the other performers, and the programs, himself. During the Fêtes, Richter and his wife lived in a secluded house on the estate of the Van de Veldes. We were also fortunate guests there. For a few weeks each year, as John described it, “life was a FrancoRussian paradise. There were no regular hours. Conversations drifted this way and that in Chekhovian style. Hugely gifted people drew upon their sense of play, as when the great violist Yuri Bashmet rode round and round the house on a tiny child's bicycle. “Dinner was at no particular time and for no foreseeable number of people. It usually ran late. With good food and good wine, collegial good humor drew near to wildness.” One evening it leaked out that we had to move on the next morning. Richter pulled one of his more terrifying faces. “But you can't go,” he said, “we're going to play the Stravinsky Concerto for Two Pianos tomorrow evening.''Then he paused. ''Well, if you really must leave, we'll play it for you now”. The dining room seated eight or ten and was an extension of the small living room that had two pianos, side by side. Richter and Vassily Lobanov came over and sat with their backs to us, just an inch or two away. Whether in public or in private, Richter gave all he had. The Stravinsky concerto in question is strenuous, from beginning to end. In high-summer short sleeves, Richter played as if he were laying his life on the line. That massive head, that rocklike back, and those formidable arms and hands radiated an implacable power. “That's not the whole program!” Richter said at the end, and added two sizable encores before the evening was over.