By |

This excellent initiative was started by Australian piano teacher and composer Elissa Milne. The purpose was to promote and implement the concept of students learning a huge quantity of piano pieces in one year to allow students to learn, experience and perform far more pieces than our exam-focussed culture tends to allow. Known learning outcomes from the exercise include improved sight-reading skills, greater independence in learning, and enhanced musicianship and music appreciation.

Another similar initiative is the Go-Play Project, in which US pianist and teacher Catherine Shefski set herself the task of learning (or relearning) a piece of piano music each week over the course of a year (she recorded the pieces and uploaded them to SoundCloud). Like many piano teachers, Catherine felt she was not spending enough time at the piano for herself amidst all the teaching and admin that goes with running a piano teaching studio. I followed Cathy’s project with interest and told myself that one day I would do something similar.

A new year, and a number of pianist friends and colleagues have embarked on their own 40-Piece Challenge. Despite, or because of, the fact that I have set myself a vast learning challenge in Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata (D959 in A), I decided it was time to try my own 40-Piece Challenge. My motives for doing so are slightly different from the original purpose of the project:

What kind of repertoire?

The Schubert sonata is a big work in four movements, which takes c.40 minutes to play, and the learning process is by necessity long and detailed. It would be foolish to add other very advanced works to my musical diet, so the premise is to learn shorter and “easier” works for the challenge. And the pieces selected do not necessarily have to be “new”: as part of the exercise, I am revisiting some pieces I learnt a few years ago. There is much to be gained from reviving previous repertoire, as new insights and ideas about the music are revealed.

To guard against boredom and retain variety in my practising

I would be crazy to devote all my practise time to the Schubert alone. Adding a variety of shorter works is a supplement to my main learning and a way of ensuring I retain interest and excitement in the piano.

To extend my repertoire

When one is working for exams or diplomas, there is a terrible tendency to focus only on the set pieces. This is not healthy, as too much focus on a narrow repertoire can lead to familiar pieces growing stale. One often finds that even the most disparate repertoire will inform other works. I also wanted to have a “bank” of pieces I could call on for the occasional concerts I give.

Each piece will be recorded and uploaded to my Soundcloud

Recording is an excellent way of evaluating one’s playing and an opportunity to listen in a different way, allowing us to make judgements about which areas need revision or improvement. By insisting on recording each piece, I am forcing myself to prepare each work carefully. This in itself is a useful exercise: just because the repertoire is “easier”, it should still be prepared to a high (concert-ready) level.

Update 1 – September 2015

With 27 pieces recorded and uploaded to Soundcloud, I am nearly three-quarters of the way through the project. There was a slight hiatus during the summer break when I was devoting much of my practise time to the Schubert Sonata in order to meet a personal deadline to have the entire sonata in the fingers by the end of June. Also, the piano was in need of a tune and I didn’t want to make any further recordings until it had been tuned.

Learning outcomes so far:

  • The project has encouraged me to learn “fast and smart”
  • I have become slightly less hyper-critical than usual about my playing, resulting in, I think, fresher and more imaginative recordings.
  • It has given me a focus in that each week I consider which works should be prepared for the challenge and add them to my practising diet.
  • It has made my work on the Schubert more enjoyable because there is variety in my practising regime

Update 2 – December 2015

I completed the project in early December – ahead of my deadline – and 40 pieces are now uploaded to my SoundCloud. I enjoyed the project very much, in particular the discipline of learning shorter pieces quickly and carefully. I am now considering a new 40 Piece Challenge for 2016 during which I will learn and record 40 new pieces of music (rather than a mixture of new and revived works).

The pieces:

For those considering a similar challenge, I offer some repertoire suggestions (intermediate to advanced level):

J S Bach – Kleine Preludes, Two- and Three-Part Inventions

Chopin – Preludes, Waltzes, Mazurkas, Nocturnes

Beethoven – Bagatelles

Schubert – Moments Musicaux, Ländler, Waltzes

Heller – Etudes

Rachmaninoff – Preludes, Moments Musicaux, 6 Morceaux Op 11, Etudes-Tableaux

Scriabin – Preludes, Etudes and other shorter piano works

Prokofiev – Visions Fugitives

Bartok – Mikrokosmos (later volumes)

Ligeti – Musica Ricercata

Debussy – Preludes, Children’s Corner

Scarlatti – Sonatas

Single movements from sonatas by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.

By |

When I was a child my father had in his LP collection a Schubert album with Richer on Monitor Records. That was one of the very few record labels that was offering artists from the then USSR to the West. During the height of the ‘Cold War’ it was a very esoteric thing to have. I remember the fast movements were so exciting and electrifying. Being a young person, with a young person’s taste, I would ignore all the wonderful slow movements. (PU)

One of my top 5! But he was a very scary man when he was doing our assessments in Moscow. Gilels on the other hand was a pussy cat! I recall his recital in Warsaw……when he arrived late  (weather conditions in Moscow and Warsaw) and went straight on the stage, and after an incredible recital played Prokofieff’s 9th Sonata again, this time as an encore!! What more can one say about that?! (AF)

I have a huge stash of Richter recordings, along with video, and both Monsaingeon’s documentary and the book based on it. I have to say, I don’t always agree with his choices or artistic decisions, but I always learn something new listening to them. I know I’m not alone in that view. There really aren’t many musicians one could say that of,  don’t you think? (JG)

 

I have always admired Sviatoslav Richter since the time I was a little boy and learned how to pronounce Sviatoslav! (PC)

 

Richter was the reason I became a musician. My father heard Richter many times in Budapest in his prime in the 1960s. The concerts were without announced programs–he announced the selections from the stage. People thronged to get tickets. My father came back with such stories of Richter’s aura and magnetism: “he had only to walk on stage for the electricity to happen.” These impressions brought me to the piano… (ZB)

He was a risk-taker: there are very few players on the international circuit today who would be prepared to do what Richter did…. He was truly a musical polymath (FW)

…there will never be another pianist like him in my view….a true philosopher of the piano, although even that does not do him full justice… I was lucky enough to see him in live performance almost 25 times and each concert remains indelibly imprinted in my memory. Such a mercurial, ‘bel canto’ touch, such thunderous power combined with the most delicate phrasing and infinite shades of colour. One was always surprised in his concerts and it always felt like one was hearing the piece for the first time…that global, birds-eye view of the work….one felt one was being taken by the hand and led along a path of discovery…it really felt like that…I will take those memories with me to my grave… (LL)

I know he never had a thirst for fame, narcissism……On the contrary, he was constantly dissatisfied with himself, and, sometimes when he come back home after the success of a concert, he could spend all night at the piano, in order to achieve the desired sound. He was a great worker like Mozart, like all geniuses. He was always moving from internal to external, that is his interpretation of music first born inside him, and after this he begin to embody it into performance. I think this is the true path of art 

 

Thank you to everyone who contributed to these Recollections of Richter posts. Follow the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #Richter100 – and please feel free to add further reminiscences, sound and video clips, photographs and more.

Richter playing his favourite Schubert sonata:

 

 

 

By |

On the centenary of the birth of Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, I am delighted to present a series of recollections from pianist friends and colleagues, readers of this blog, those who met and knew Richter, and many others around the world.

The internet has proved a fantastic resource for sharing favourite recordings, video clips, quotations, ephemera and reminiscences of Richter. Thank you to everyone who has contributed. To join in the centenary celebrations on Twitter, please use the hashtag #richter100.

His personality was greater than the possibilities offered to him by the piano, broader than the very concept of complete mastery of the instrument.
Pierre Boulez

He doesn’t hurry the first section, which creates a great tension with the string melody, and also the tonal colours he uses to bring out the inner voices in each movement. Definitely a most melodic Rach 2 (DR)

Richter’s 1958 Sofia Recital consists of (in my humble opinion) one of the greatest recordings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (ML)

This man, along with Glenn Gould, has changed the way I listen to the music.
( “Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto n°2” – Sviatoslav Richter & Warsaw Philarmonic Orchestra – DGG) (RU)

Richter’s Prokofiev performances in general, the 8th Sonata in particular. He plays as one who has lived through the bleak circumstances during which it was written. For me it is the combination of incredible control and restraint on the one hand and sheer bolshiness on the other that makes his playing so intoxicating. (PL)

His 1960 Moscow ‘Appassionata’ is my favorite recording of that work, which is arguably one of the most important works in the whole repertoire. The energy, speed, tonal range at the most explosive passages and general theatrical effect makes it one of a kind to me. And let’s not forget it is a live performance (like most of his recordings). There are other similar best-in-world achievements that combine athleticism with emotional expression, but always with moderation, refined taste and discipline, like Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’, Dvorak’s Concerto. In summary I would say that his performances in whatever genre was almost always world-class, which cannot be said of many other pianists, which, in combination with perhaps the biggest repertoire ever, creates an almost endless oeuvre for listeners to enjoy the whole life. (JN)
 
I have been in awe of Richter since my student days. His live recording of the ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ has got to be the most staggering performance in the history of the medium. I would be quite happy to have one percent of his interpretive skills. (RI)
Apparently he hated testing pianos – that scary business when you go in to a piano showroom and everyone seems to be playing Liszt from memory and you can barely remember a C major chord – when proffered a test Steinway, he’d poke one note and then back off, looking startled. (RE)
The greatest pianist I ever heard. Why? Because of his fierce commitment, artistic integrity and sound. Even when at his most seemingly ‘perverse’ (Schubert tempi for example) he took you on the most unbelievable musical journeys. Shook hands with him once after a recital in Cheltenham and we spoke in German. Youngsters these days have no idea of the thoroughness of a training he enjoyed….playing on lousy upright pianos in freezing weather on the back of troop carriers in the war. He was largely indifferent to pianos though he displayed a curious penchant for Yamahas in the last decade or so of his life but generally he just played whatever was in front of him. I heard him, I suppose at his best from the mid-60’s on. A transcendental artist, and the film ‘The Enigma’ is essential viewing for anyone interested not just in him but in pianism generally. Not the man for all men though – Brendel told me that when he was listening to SR playing Schubert’s G major sonata live (on radio) from the Royal Festival Hall he wanted to hurl the radio through the window. This probably tells us more about Brendel than Richter. Essential viewing also – Richter’s performance with Rostropovich of the complete Beethoven cello sonatas from the Edinburgh Festival – a hastily arranged, last-minute concert starting (I think) at midnight! Available on dvd. If I had to choose only one pianist’s recordings to take to my desert island it would be Richter. (JH)
I had a privilege having Slava as part of music upbringing through his many LPs, as I may humbly mention my mom has studied and gained her Masters with Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in the 60s.

As I have studied with my mother, I was raised with Russian School, for which I feel humbled and honoured, as at its time had produced such an array of brilliant players, particularly mastering tone production and voicing.

Of course Slava was one of a kind, just as Heinrich described in every way and very often talked of his incredible artistry during his classes.

I may be wrong, but I personally find his Brahms Concerto No. 2, Franck Prelude Chorale and Fugue and many of Liszt, Schubert, Beethoven, Rachmaninov and Chopin absolutely mercurial and I may imagine, awesome to behold. (DG)

Richter! Takes you by the hand and leads you where only he knows…. (AM)
…the unique atmosphere of a Richter concert. The audience in darkness, the imposing profile, the solidity of the sound, the savage beauty of the interpretation…truly a cataclysmic event, quite outside the usual parameters of the ‘piano recital’ (JL)

I first heard him at the end of my first term at the RCM. Dec 7th 1970. Sat on the platform about 5 yds from the keyboard. The memory of that evening is still so strong. I had never before, and rarely since, witnessed such astonishing playing. Simply spell-binding. The power of Schubert D958 and the alarming speed of the finale was electrifying. Then wonderful Bartók and Szymanowski, and the concert ended with a breathtaking Prokofiev 7th Sonata. I wanted, in equal measure, to rush home and practice and to give up and never play again!

He could sometimes infuriate but at his best he was beyond compare. I feel privileged that I heard him live on many occasions but nothing matched up to that December evening in 1970. (CB)

It’s precisely Richter’s certainty, his integrity, the fact that music seems to speak with an Olympian objectivity at the same time as an impossible-sounding lyricism and sustained tone (listen to his extraordinarily slow yet convincing Schubert sonatas), without ever a shred of indulgence in virtuosity or sensuality for its own sake, that makes these performances definitively Richterian. That’s the point about his musicianship: its strength of conviction and imagination makes you believe when you’re listening to him that this really is the way the music has to go, that what you’re hearing truly is the fundamental core of these pieces.

(Tom Service, The Guardian – 10 of the best: Essential Richter recordings)

By |

Guest post by A Piano Fan

I have no personal reminiscences of getting to hear Richter live or meet him. I don’t even remember how I “got into Richter,” when or where I first heard what, but he’s become my favorite pianist. What stands out to me about Richter’s pianism is the amazing combination of structural control and emotional conviction. From his ability to sustain the narrative of a 25-minute long Schubert sonata movement to his ability to impart so much motion into a flourish that it threatens to fly away – there is always something deeply impressive about his performances. I would say I really learned to appreciate piano performance through listening to him. Even in small details – such as the voicing of secondary lines in chords, as in this moment from Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto: https://youtu.be/uT_ZhhQeudY?t=4m4s , or subtle pedalling in apparently simple music: https://youtu.be/POmD0N9WJ08?t=3m29s

Or in moments of complete apocalyptic piano destruction, as in the coda of his Chopin 4 ballade https://youtu.be/v9Dc2u7P1d4?t=32m35s . I also learned that the piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition is better than any orchestration: https://youtu.be/CitIXrkQfzo?t=26m23s

But what draws me most to his playing is the sense of depth and weight he imparted to so many pieces, as in the mystical adagio of the ‘Hammerklavier’, https://youtu.be/dlwK3IIT6jo?t=53m51s.  And the epic amounts of tension approaching a climax – as in the Liszt Sonata (https://youtu.be/2UFnqYT6DyU?t=3m58s now to me it sounds as though every other pianist rushes that passage). I came to appreciate long structures, even in those meditative, super-slow Schubert sonatas movements https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7_OW2__ZR0 I have no idea know how I used to listen to the piano performance, but Richter transformed my ears – and in such a wide variety of repertoire! These are a just few of the reasons why I consider him the greatest pianist of the 20th century.