ROOTS AND WINGS with Boris Burda: Sviatoslav Richter, the world-renowned pianist from Zhytomyr and Odesa
Sviatoslav Richter with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, 1960 / nytimes.com
My native Odesa has produced so many remarkable musicians that to spit on the street and not hit a place somehow connected to their memory, you’d have to aim on purpose. But the hero of my story stands out even among them — a truly exceptional figure.
True, he was born in Zhytomyr, but his father soon moved the family to Odesa, where he lived for about two decades.
It’s a sad fact that he not only left the city behind, but outwardly erased it from his life and biography — never speaking of it, never mentioning his Odesa years. Perhaps it was too painful to remember the city where his father was executed.
For no reason, not even a whiff of tobacco — simply for being German, and it was August 1941. Incidentally, his mother, born Moskaleva on her father’s side, was a von Reinke on her mother’s — so he himself was three-quarters German.
hat Odesa was, in some sense, a “forbidden zone” for him is confirmed by his touring record. It’s been calculated that he gave 271 concerts in Ukraine — including 90 in Kyiv (the first on November 15, 1944, the last on April 12, 1985), 33 in Lviv, 14 in Kharkiv, and 4 in Zhytomyr… but not a single word about Odesa.
There were a couple of performances before the war and before fame — and that seems to be all. I remember the posters of the Odesa Philharmonic from those years quite well, but I don’t recall seeing Richter’s name.
His friends do remember, however, that at the height of his fame, he came to Odesa a couple of times, almost incognito — to visit a few old friends with whom he had never broken off correspondence. But the claim that he also stopped by his old apartment — that’s probably inaccurate.
He did remember the address well — 2 Nezhynska Street, apartment 15. I spent my childhood at 5 Nezhynska, practically across the street, and I recall that this house was destroyed during the war.
Later, I was shown another of his apartments — on Novoselskoho Street, next to the Lutheran church. That was his father’s official residence as the church organist. Maybe that’s where he went? He definitely saw the ruins of the church — it was the last building in Odesa to be restored after wartime destruction. Today, services are held there again, and organ concerts take place — but he never got to witness that.
His father, Theophil Danilovich Richter, was not only an organist but also a teacher at the Odesa Conservatory — which stands right across from the church. In addition to teaching students, he also taught his son, which later led to an amusing situation — when applying to the conservatory, it turned out that the son had no formal musical education.
That is, he had no document to prove it — but his skills were more than sufficient. By the age of fifteen, he had already secured a job as a rehearsal pianist at the Odesa Seamen’s Club, where he was sometimes paid in cash — and once received an entire sack of potatoes, which was a great treasure at the time.
From there, he moved on to a similar job at the Philharmonic, and then even to the famous Odesa Opera House — all by the age of nineteen, almost at the same time as his first solo recital, where he performed works by Chopin.
Then it was time to pursue formal education, and Richter went to Moscow to apply to the conservatory. The great pianist and teacher Heinrich Neuhaus once recalled his first encounter with a future student: «Some students asked me to listen to a young man from Odesa who wanted to join my class at the conservatory. — «Has he finished music school?» I asked. — «No, he’s never studied anywhere».
It was fascinating to lay eyes on such a daredevil. And then he came… His playing immediately struck me with its astonishing depth and insight into the music. I whispered to my student: “I think he’s a genius.”
With Neuhaus’s help, Richter overcame all the formalities related to the lack of a certificate of basic musical education and was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory. But soon he dropped out and returned home to Odesa — he simply couldn’t understand why a pianist had to study general education subjects and flatly refused to do so.
At first, it was up to his parents to convince him there was no way around it, and then Neuhaus had to persuade the conservatory leadership to forgive their gifted student’s unauthorized departure. Richter later wrote: “Neuhaus was like a father to me.” And together with his actual father, they managed to convince him…
Then the war began. For Richter, too, it was time to put his studies aside — everyone understood that he was already a fully formed, brilliant pianist. By December 1941, he was performing Tchaikovsky’s concerto at the Great Hall of the Conservatory. He would later write: «My entire career began with the war».
His touring life took him across the country, and not always without difficulties. In Leningrad, he gave a concert just before New Year 1944. Afterward, someone looked at his passport and immediately said: «You need to leave at once» — they had spotted the «nationality» field. What had happened to his father, who had the same fifth line in his passport, he learned only after the war.
Perhaps it was for the best — things were truly grim. His mother had fallen in love with another man, once a high-ranking official under the Tsar, with a German surname he had concealed and changed to a Russian one — Kondratyev. Under his influence, she refused evacuation, and Theophil Danilovich, though aware of the affair, considered it impossible to leave her behind and refused to go as well.
He was executed on the spot, while Richter’s mother, together with that man, eventually evacuated westward — to Germany — just before Odesa was liberated. For many years, Richter knew nothing about this.
In 1945, Richter won the third All-Union Competition of Performers. It was quite unusual — how could the best pianist of the USSR at the first postwar competition be a German?
It’s said that the decision came directly from Stalin, who, to soften the optics, ordered the first prize to be shared between Richter and Victor Merzhanov, an Armenian war veteran. Perhaps it was a calculated move to distract from the fact that millions of Soviet Germans — guilty of nothing — were being deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan? Or perhaps Stalin just liked Richter? Most people did.
At one of his concerts, Sviatoslav performed with a singer whom he later recalled as «looking like a princess». He approached her and suggested giving a concert together. The young woman assumed he meant performing in separate parts of the same program — but he simply offered to accompany her. The idea hadn’t even crossed her mind, as Richter was already famous. That singer, Nina Lvovna Dorliak, would soon become his wife. Their marriage lasted until Richter’s death — and she outlived him by less than a year.
Some memoirs suggest that Richter’s marriage to Dorliak was a formal arrangement, as his sexual orientation was considered unsuitable for marriage. But proving or disproving this is as difficult as it is irrelevant — the better question is: «So what?»
They clearly lived well and harmoniously. In the only lengthy interview he ever gave (Richter despised interviews, and it was only a few months before his death that French television managed to persuade him), he spoke of her with warmth and tenderness. What more do we need to know — and what right do we even have to pry? And what difference does any of it make when evaluating his art? That’s where the matter ends.
In 1947, he finally graduated from the conservatory, though he did not receive a diploma with honors. It’s a wonder he graduated at all, considering that during his civics exam, when asked «Who is Karl Marx?» he hesitantly replied, «I think… a utopian socialist?» — and the word «graduated» clearly had more than one meaning in his case.
It’s no surprise that for a long time, Richter only toured within the USSR and occasionally in countries of the «people’s democracies». Even the legendary impresario Sol Hurok, who had good relations with Soviet party officials, was repeatedly turned down — the excuse was always that Richter was ill and unable to travel.
He was finally «allowed to recover» under Khrushchev — as Richter put it, it was at the request of Ekaterina Furtseva. Ungratefully, Richter soon upset her — though most likely out of naiveté. During a conversation, Furtseva was outraged: «What does Rostropovich think he’s doing? Why is that dreadful Solzhenitsyn living at his dacha?» — to which Richter replied, «Absolutely right. Rostropovich’s dacha is small, it’s cramped — let him live at mine».
Still, they kept letting him travel, and soon, he toured almost the entire world, performing in the most prestigious venues a pianist could dream of. Today, one can only marvel at the scope of his vast repertoire — from Baroque composers to contemporaries who had yet to gain academic recognition. At least 54 composers, according to one count
He performed on every continent except Antarctica. He loved to travel and almost never turned down an invitation. As he once said: «I’m ready to play in a school without a fee, I perform in small halls for free — it doesn’t matter to me…»
If we know anything at all about his unsuccessful concerts, it’s perhaps just the one in Vienna, where he had hoped to reunite with his mother, who had resurfaced after the war. Right before the performance, he was told that she was dying. He later recalled playing so terribly that a local newspaper titled its review «Farewell to a Legend». I haven’t heard of any other failures.
Several major music festivals — in Touraine (France), in Tarusa, and the «December Evenings» at the Pushkin Museum — consider him their founder. But he was never invited to serve on the juries of piano competitions after the finals of the First Tchaikovsky Competition, where he famously gave Van Cliburn a perfect score of 25 — and zero to everyone else. Unlike many of his peers, Richter didn’t teach. He had more than enough to do already.
He spent the final years of his life in Paris, but shortly before his death, he returned to Moscow, where he soon died of a heart attack. Afterward, his immense lifetime fame only grew greater in death.
He was not only a People’s Artist of the USSR and a recipient of the Stalin Prize, the Lenin Prize, and the State Prize — he was also awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Oxford and Strasbourg, received a Grammy Award, and earned a Golden Disc from the Melodiya label… The list could go on — and there’s not a single undeserved award among them.
And is Sviatoslav Richter still remembered in the country where he was born and began his artistic path? It seems so — a monument to Richter stands not only in Bydgoszcz, Poland but also in Yahotyn, Ukraine. And now, in both his native Zhytomyr and his equally native Odesa, there are streets named after Richter.
People like Richter are those we can — and should — be proud of. Certainly no less than of politicians, conquerors, or feudal lords. Let’s consider this a good beginning
When copying materials, please place an active link to www.huxley.media
Select the text and press Ctrl + Enter
