Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) is widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. In this translation of the first full-scale biography of Richter, Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen combines his artistic appreciation of Richter’s career with a sympathetic telling of the pianist’s life based on family archives and interviews with people who worked and lived with him.
Richter enjoyed early success in the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Prize in 1949. He traveled and performed throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, and earned notice in the West via his recordings. In 1960 he toured in the West to great acclaim, including a run of successful performances at Carnegie Hall. He would remain an active performer throughout his life.
Richter was an intensely private and withdrawn individual who disliked the glare and trappings of celebrity, even preferring to play small halls where the audience could concentrate on the details of his performance. The book also details his chronic depression and homosexuality, and the impact that this may have had in curbing his political activities. Rasmussen celebrates one of the giants of twentieth-century music while painting a realistic portrait of the often troubled double life that many Soviet citizens, especially public artists, were forced to lead.
The book is so well-written, exciting, and captivating, it can almost be read as a novel; it is also thoroughly well-documented and characterized by the author’s enormous professional knowledge. It is impressive that a Danish writer with no particular knowledge of the Russian language has been able to include so many essential details; one would be hard-pressed to imagine anything lacking on this account.
During his Weimar period, Johann Sebastian Bach composed a wealth of works. Among them are the 22 solo keyboard transcriptions of concertos by his Italian and German contemporaries: six for organ (BWV 592–596) and 16 for single-manual keyboard (BWV 972–987). The latter includes many famous baroque concertos by for example Vivaldi, Marcello and Telemann.
This collection of 16 works is now available for download from Piano Street’s online sheet music library in editions by Ernst Naumann for Bach-Gesellschaft edition: Bach – Transcriptions of Baroque Concertos
Glenn Gould performs the transcription of Marcellos Oboe Concerto in D minor:
Alfred Brendel is an outstanding modern exponent of Schubert’s piano music. He is capable of bringing not only the verve of this music but also its poetic intensity and intellectual depth to life with a special vibrancy.
In this unique collection – a 5 DVD box (on Naxos) at a very attractive price – he plays all of Schubert’s major works for keyboard and introduces each piece, throwing light on its compositional substance and at the same time revealing his own highly personal relationship with these masterpieces of Romantic music. The series, recorded by Radio Bremen in 1976/1977, has never yet been released for home viewing. It is a timeless and infinitely fascinating document by a pianist, who has been on the international concert scene for decades without losing his magnetism for audiences and critics worldwide.
Piano sheet music to download of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy:
What Scarlatti is most prominently remembered for are the 555 short keyboard sonatas originally labelled Essercizi (Exercises). When he died in Madrid, Scarlatti left this treasury of manuscripts, which were largely unplayed beyond Spain and Portugal until pianist Carl Czerny published a selection of the sonatas in 1839.
34 of the most popular sonatas have been added to Piano Street’s sheet music library which now contains 192 of the sonatas by Scarlatti.
Here is one of the most well-known, Sonata K 380 in E Major, performed by Vladimir Horowitz in Moscow 1986:
“This is an oustanding achievement, which any genuine Chopin lover and student of Romantic music should own … A landmark in the recording of Chopin’s music … Garrick Ohlsson and Hyperion deserve the greatest success in bringing this important undertaking to such a consistently impressive conclusion” (International Record Review)
Click the sheet music to open the printable autograph score (3.9Mb ) in a new browser window or right click “Save target as…” to download the file.
Please share your comments and personal thoughts about Chopin’s music here and let your friends and colleagues know about this blog post by making use of the “Share/Save” button below.
Reporting from Warsaw — The stirring strains of Frederic Chopin’s music are reverberating across the world as music lovers celebrate the composer’s 200th birthday this year — from the château of his French lover to Egypt’s pyramids and even into space.
But nowhere do celebrations carry the powerful sense of national feeling as they do in Poland, the land of his birth, where his heroic, tragic piano compositions are credited with capturing the country’s soul.
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) is widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. In this translation of the first full-scale biography of Richter, Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen combines his artistic appreciation of Richter’s career with a sympathetic telling of the pianist’s life based on family archives and interviews with people who worked and lived with him.
