Valery Gergiev: "You have to put Parsifal on stage" (Richter)

While Mravinsky influenced the spirit of Gergiev's art, Sviatoslav Richter guided the evolution of his repertoire. Conductor and pianist worked together in the latter's final years. Richter saw Gergiev conduct Beethoven's Eroica Symphony on Soviet television in 1993 and let it be known that he wanted to work with him. The request, recalls Gergiev, came as a shock. The 'enigmatic and mysterious artist' was, after all, a living legend, justifiably hailed by Shostakovich as an extraordinary phenomenon.

"We met five or six times to talk before we performed together. I was so thrilled and in such disbelief that Richter would even talk to me in person. We discussed many things, including Wagner's Parsifal. I had very little knowledge of this opera at the time; I knew Lohengrin and parts of Die Meistersinger and Tannhäuser. But I did not know then that Parsifal would one day play such a big part in my life. It was Richter who told me: "You have to put Parsifal on stage".

Despite Richter's dread of flying, he travelled by plane from Moscow to Japan for a concert engagement with Gergiev. It proved to be their final meeting before the pianist's death in 1997.

"He did not take this flight lightly,” Gergiev recalls. “He got sick but was strong enough for us to have lunch. We talked and talked about so many things. Maybe he sensed it was our last discussion. He told me I should conduct Prokofiev'Semyon Kotko and Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution. And again Richter insisted that I should conduct Parsifal. And I did. I have been very lucky to conduct Parsifal many times with the Mariinsky, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, with the Vienna Philharmonic. But it was in our new Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg where this piece came to miraculous life for me in 2009.”