Outward Flourishes

Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) was one of the most celebrated pianists of the twentieth century, yet to the general public his figure remains shrouded in a mysterious, almost brooding veil of inaccessibility. This is especially valid of his personality, which I am only now starting to encounter through a series of late documentaries (the video excerpt above belongs to the film Richter, L’Insoumis). Call it a vain consequence of taking up the piano at an incorrigibly late age, but the life of these pianists interests me ever more (especially considering most of them were forced to traverse and weather the extreme adversity of some events in the last century, a reality which we have been fortunately denied).

It is said of Vladimir Horowitz that he experienced stage fright throughout his entire career, apparently lacking faith in his prodigious capabilities and sometimes requiring a (very  much literal) push onto the stage. In a legendary performer such as Volodya (Horowitz’ widely-used term of endearment attests to his enduring popularity and likeable nature), this minor fact quickly becomes diluted in his biography as little more than a personal idiosyncrasy, a trifle, an eccentricity, comparable in nature to the boisterous vocal outbursts of genuine enthusiasm he lavished upon whatever lucky spectator witnessed him practice the fiendish transcription of Carmen Fantasie or the much sought-after piano rendition of John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes.

And after all, we we can always sympathise with an insecure and modest artist, even we when we know he has no reason for such hesitations.

Richter’s sincere lamentations, however, are of a wholly different nature, and much more unsettling for that. A man who concedes that he does not like himself (and who enacts it through his interpretation of music) is the recipient of a much wider set of contradictory forces than a skilled artist with an occasional fear of failure or rejection. The visceral disappointment Richter displays in connection with his work and his own character is utterly disarming.

By all accounts, this man was invaluable. By all means, it should not be accepted that such people may go through life unhappy, not when the rest of us strive to attain their own level of clarity, expertise, or sensitivity. One is reminded of an observation by Jacques Derrida on the morose condition of Antonin Artaud to which I keep returning:

It would certainly be disingenuous to close our eyes, either because of some literary feeling or some absentminded politeness, to what Artaud himself describes as a neuropathological persecution.

Moreover, that kind of disingenuousness would be insulting. The man is sick.

Richter’s biography is available for all to examine. His sexual ambiguity and repression, his extended, voluntary permanence in the Soviet Union (along with the restrictions imposed upon him and his family during foreign tours), his respect and rigid deference to the musical scores he interpreted, all of these traits and many more are free for the the arm-chair psychologist to analyse. In the end, however, the reality was that the man was sick, and I would have preferred the beauty in his music did not stem from this very uncomfortable fact.