Sviatoslav Richter

Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter (1915 –1997) was a Soviet pianist of Russian-German origin, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.

Richter is known for the "depth of his interpretations, his virtuoso technique, and his vast repertoire."

Unusually, he was largely self-taught. His father only gave him a basic education in music, and so did one of his father's pupils, a Czech harpist.

Even at an early age, Richter was an excellent sight-reader and regularly practised with local opera and ballet companies. He developed a lifelong passion for opera, vocal and chamber music that found its full expression in the festivals he established in La Grange de Meslay, France, and in Moscow, at the Pushkin Museum. At age 15, he started to work at the Odessa Opera, where he accompanied the rehearsals.

In 1949 Richter won the Stalin Prize, which led to extensive concert tours in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. He gave his first concerts outside the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia in 1950. Having received the Stalin and Lenin prizes and become People's Artist of the RSFSR, he gave his first tour concerts in the USA in 1960, and in England and France in 1961.

While he very much enjoyed performing for an audience, Richter hated planning concerts years in advance, and in later life took to playing at very short notice in small, most often darkened halls, with only a small lamp lighting the score. Richter said that this setting helped the audience focus on the music being performed, rather than on extraneous and irrelevant matters such as the performer's grimaces and gestures.