Sviatoslav Richter Schubert: Trout Quintet (Vinyl)

Sviatoslav Richter is universally acknowledged to be one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, renowned for his virtuoso technique and the depth of his interpretations. Dmitri Shostakovich said about him: “Richter is an extraordinary phenomenon. The enormity of his talent staggers and enraptures. All the phenomena of musical art are accessible to him.” He trained at the Moscow Conservatory under Heinrich Neuhaus, who considered Richter “already a complete artist", who had the ability to build a piece "so that it seemed to lie before him like an immense landscape, revealed to the eye at a single glance". The Borodin Quartet was founded in 1945 at the Moscow Conservatoire – the first cellist a certain Mstislav Rostropovich was replaced after few weeks by Valentin Berlinsky – was also close to Shostakovich, who personally consulted them on each of his quartets. The Borodin Quartet, celebrated for penetrating phrase and warm sound, was Richter favourite chamber music partner. Georg Hörtnagel is a German double bassist who used to play with Bayerische Staatsoper during the Georg Solti era. The recordingAbout this Austrian live recording from June 1980 GRAMOPHONE said: “This is a performance of high quality. Sviatoslav Richter in particular precisely catches the cheerful mood of the music and the underlying shadows of which one should sometimes be conscious, and he plays those simple tunes in octaves so freshly that you'd think he'd only just discovered their charms.”