The Sonata, recorded three decades later, shows a different side to Richter, not angry this time, but relaxed both with himself and with the music, thoughtful and contemplative. Relatively speaking of course, Richter's ability to rise to the challenge of the score's more aggressive passages is never in doubt.
I've approached this disc because it's one of the "Gramophone Classical 100", i.e. one of the 100 best classical recordings of all the times (reviewed by Gramophone). Just listen to it to agree: Richter is not a surprise (my greatest sadness comes from the consciousness that we won't have any other recording from him). He has performed many concertos together with Kondrashin, and their feeling comes up at once from the firsts seconds.
Furthermore, the coupling with the Sonata S178 has been, in my opinion, a very happy choice.
The only drawback to be kept in account is the recording quality. The disc is an ADD, and not one of the best ones. The piano is not bad, but the orchestra's sound is thin and a bit confused. Fortunately for the disc, the loose in recording quality weights much lesser than the artistic quality.
Compositionally, these concertos are NOT the pride of their gender, but Richter and Kondrashin makes the most of what's there. In the first concerto, for example, the movements were combined to form a one-movement work, which to me sounds structurally stronger. (Little things like that makes a BIG impression!) Enjoy.SURE, HE'S GOOD -- Richter, that is. Liszt was a great musician, a great figure in the history of music, and I believe a genuinely great human being, but as a composer he is naff. I recommend to everyone Shaw's hilarious review of the Dante Symphony where he rewrites Liszt's great visionary program as a chimney-fire in the east end of London with this-or-that mighty apocalypse heard as the arrival of the fire-engines etc.
Liszt has also commonly been canonised as the greatest pianist of all time, and it's quite clear that this side of him has to be taken seriously, as it was by Shaw to say nothing of Chopin. However as none of us have lived for all time or heard Liszt we should probably read between the lines of Hanslick and other contemporaries (again e.g. Shaw) and sober up. Equally we should get some sense of proportion into our view of Richter. He was a legend before he came to America, and when he got there he was offered a choice of 12 pianos. You can hear it all from the man himself in the infinitely touching film of his life that he recorded shortly before he died. He was wandering around the 12 pianos in an obvious daze, and in his own words 'that was probably why I played so badly'. I would call that an exaggeration, but he was nowhere near his best or 100 other people's best, and the American public went doolally and have stayed in a frenzy ever since. Can anyone in America tell the difference between great, goodish, indifferent and downright perverse Richter performances? I feel like putting out some of my own renditions of this or that (not too difficult) classic under the name of Richter and pressing the button for the predictable deluge of stuff I could write in advance.
This particular record is a very good one indeed if you like bad music. Richter is in top form, and I will not try to compare him with the enormous field in the sonata because that would have endangered my sanity. This is a review of the record, not of the music, and the reasons I have witheld a fifth star are first that Cziffra and Michelangeli are even better in the concertos, second that while Richter is simply terrific in the bravura stuff there is something about his introverted lyric manner that I do not like and certainly do not consider more 'expressive' than than a great many others, and thirdly because he seems to use the damper pedal in loud passages, an effect I personally loathe.
For the second concerto go for Cziffra, and unless Michelangeli is available in updated sound go for Cziffra in the first concerto as well. Cziffra can be casual at times, but there is a sheer innocence about this true super-Horowitz, particularly his lyric manner, that I find irresistable. You keep getting the sense that he has not even noticed the dumbfounding fingerwork he just produced. Michelangeli I have heard in the first concerto together with the Totentanz. If there is some 'greatest player of all time' I guess this is the guy.
