"Personal memories"
Prof. Lidia Baldecchi Arcuri
part V
Translation to be continued. Entire Italian text follows "Sviatoslav Richter in Liguria: 1962 - 1992"
FLOWERS
He preferred white flowers, but didn’t follow his predilection when he offered them. What he did follow though, was his innate generosity. Regularly, flowers from Richter transformed a living room into a greenhouse and Mrs. Orlandini, owner of the record shop (whom I have already mentioned), became the object of one of these gifts. I don’t remember on which visit to Genoa he expressed the desire to visit a record shop, but I do know that he had written a letter to the specialized magazine MUSICA denouncing the reproductions of some CDs that (according to his judgment), were not up to his standards, and therefore not personally authorized. I believe the letter was written after our visit to the shop.
I brought him to the above mentioned shop and asked for the owner. When she saw whom I had brought, she broke out into tears! I remained rather stunned and Richter was visibly touched by this unexpected emotional encounter. He looked her in the eyes hinting his typical melancholic smile. He then asked her to vision all his recordings. She opened numerous drawers packed full. He chose a certain number, and then asked me to follow him out of the store. He had obviously noticed a violet vendor on the street corner while passing by, and pulling out the usual roll of bills from his pocket, handed them to me saying, “Buy the basketful.” Notoriously those baskets are composed of several dozen very small bunches that are rather costly. I felt the necessity to remind him of the detail. “The basketful”, he insisted, “the lady has many sorrows.” Superfluous to describe her reaction. The Maestro had reacted in his way: with extremely refinedpsychological insight, and great humanity.-
a) The visit probably took place during the days near the concert held in Chiavari in March 1990.
b) The letter to MUSICA refers to the Maestro’s communication to the magazine and is printed in
n. 60 of Feb./Mar. 1990. It reads:
“I must point out to your readers how a certain number of my recordings has been released by “editors who lack any type of cultural or artistic criterion. The result is the coexistence of “performances of value, or at least of validity, and others that I don’t hesitate to qualify as “rubbish. The non-authorized release of discs of such poor standard cannot but generate in the “listeners doubts and even bewilderment. What can have moved such initiatives? Is their goal to “serve Art and to inspire listeners? Or could it be simply a commercial transaction?”
HOW HE PRACTICED (and other enlightening musical thoughts)
I’ve already mentioned how I heard the Maestro practice the Symphonic Études before the Cervo concert in the home of the Baronessa Lanni della Quara. Throughout the years though, I concluded that he always changed his practicing method according to the immediate problem he was about to face. In the case of the Schumann Études he was placing them for the first time as the opening piece of the recital and therefore felt the necessity to feel them without having warmed up. What I can testify as being the most recurring method, was that he almost always practicedpiano or pianissimo. He was barely audible even in the adjoining room (and my home was certainly not well isolated!). When I mentioned it to him, he nonchalantly answered, “When you know how to play pianissimo, fortissimo is no problem!”
Another recurring method was that he rarely practiced the compositions he would be performing on the same day or on the day after. The days before his concert in the Conservatory, he practiced only Debussy and Liszt Transcendental Studies. It was stupefying to hear the finished product, (in tempos, phrasing, differentiations of hues…), but all kept within an intensity range from a ppp to a maximum of piano– an absolutely unbelievable feat! (I thought that if all pianists adopted such a system, what a beneficial effect it would produce on the neighborhood!)
He recommended another way to practice, probably reinforced by the incident he had mentioned to me, (and also narrated by Maestro Berlinskij of the Borodin Quartet), of the lights going out during a concert. He often practiced in the dark. “It develops and strengthens your inner vision of keyboard spaces in relation to the dimensions of your gestures, and to the exactness of your judgment of your own body in space”. I personally adopted it and it worked wonders. I suggest it to my pupils, but wouldn’t swear on their adoption of this extraordinary method of practice.
Another very interesting incident (for pianists and musicians in general) concerns Urtext editions. He was to play some Chopin Impromptus in the Chiavari recital and had forgotten the score. He asked for mine. It was the Henle Urtext edition that contains rather conspicuous differences from most of the other preceding 19th and early 20th century editions. He played certain passages for me over and over again, always asking, “Which do you reallyprefer?”. I was intimidated that he was asking my opinion, but I answered, and we finished by agreeing that our preferences did not fall on the Urtext edition! He remarked, “You see, now it’s the fashion to take these first editions as gospel truth. They aren’t! The bottom line remains that, what really counts is your personal acquaintance with the entire production of a composer, your imagination and your good taste.”
After the concert held in La Spezia, I saw he was using a battered and torn edition of the Well Tempered Clavichord. Edition??...Mugellini! He saw me looking at it, and with his usual innocent expression (that signified, “really, it’s true, believe me”) said, “ Do you know, it really has some extraordinary intuitions. Why don’t they use it more often?”
Again, he had demolished, forever,another of my restrictive, academic prejudices!
ON FIDELITY to the score and TRUTH
When asked what the secret of his interpretations was, he often answered, “Maybe because I can read a score better.” He was totally convinced that his interpretations were the result of mere fidelity to the written score: that the truth of the composer emerged when, as an interpreter transparency became the rule.
Especially in his case, I don’t agree. I can easily agree that subjectively, yes it is the rule: objectively, I believe it to be highly improbable, if not impossible to realize. I shall try to document my thought by quoting an interesting book: “To Say Man” by Marko Ivan Rupnic. (Ed-Lipa)
“…in our time it is neither interesting nor acceptable to speak of an absolute and only Truth, in so far as we are all subconsciously convinced that each and everyone of us possesses his own and that it is individual, intimate and unique. In fact one of the heritages of our époque is this newly acquired awareness of Truth as plurality. It is also true though, that roots of fundamentalism (the conviction that only one truth exists and that all should abide by it) are as widespread, if not even more. Again, others conceive Religion and Truth to be indissoluble, therefore they believe that those lacking religious creeds cannot possibly accede to The Real Truth. Actually, these are all comprehensible reactions to the historical moments we have lived and witnessed…”
Rupnic continues by examining the numerous trends of thought of the predominant civilizations of the past. I am particularly intrigued and attracted by that of ancient Greece and feel it is obviously applicable to Artists in general; but in particular to the phenomenonRichter.
“For the ancient Greeks, Truth includedall that was worthy of being collectively remembered. It was that which was constantly present; it was something never really buried or forgotten; it was that which was not subject to fashion or customs and thereby capable of overriding the temporal element. It is this absence of the time element which permits one to rediscover it and to contemplate it repeatedly.
Truth is therefore an “engraved eternal memory”, or a “perennial memorial”.
On the other hand, Greek thought also established that “The Eternal” could exist only within the Olympus of the gods; that humans, destined to inhabit the “Kingdom of Shades”, were limited merely to the elaboration of opinions.
Subsequently the gods fathered the Muses who were meant to preside specifically over all artistic creation. It followed that the “earthlyTruth” of humans, under Their protection and guidance, could to a degree,(by means of inspirations, creations, and the ideas of philosophers, artists and poets), draw from the “divineTruth”. Humans, destined to a world of opinions, were thus allowed access to sudden illuminated glimpses of the Olympic “reign of Truth”, which, in even the best of cases, was composed of only fragments of the “whole”.
The interpreter, in order to bring to life a work that without him would remain unheard and subsequently unknown, is in turn and in my opinion, if not a creator a re-creator. It follows that in the case of Richter, I really don’t believe that he was in the position to judge or to separate that which composed his individual, unique engraved (genetic) memory from a universally recognized memory as Truth.
He was simply endowed by the Muses to be illuminated by, and to participate in sudden glimpses of the divine Truth. He wasn’t in the least conscious of it and attributed it to fidelity and good score-reading!!!
Translation to be continued. Entire Italian text follows "Sviatoslav Richter in Liguria: 1962 - 1992"