For fans of Sviatoslav Richter, it does not much matter if the sound is not all that great and it does not much matter if the repertoire is the same repertoire as always. It does not even matter much if the performances are not the greatest Richter ever recorded. For fans of Sviatoslav Richter, the only thing that matters is that there are new Richter recordings because that all by itself means that they will be some of the greatest performances of the greatest repertoire ever recorded. And this five-disc set of Sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt does not disappoint. With recordings dates from 1961 through 1975 and recording venues all in the USSR and its empire, the sound is hard and harsh. But with repertoire ranging from the last three Beethoven Sonatas through Schubert's last Sonata to Liszt's only Sonata, the music has the supreme masterpieces of the Romantic repertoire. And while there are Richter performances here and there that may arguably exceed these, Richter's performances here are as virtuosic, as expressive, as profound, and as transcendent as any he ever recorded. Which makes them some of the greatest performances of the greatest repertoire ever recorded.

Between 1965 and 1967 Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav Richter teamed up at the Aldeburgh Festival for piano duo programs that were taped by the BBC for future broadcast. Music and Arts brought out this material on several CD issues, which stemmed from excellent tape sources. The selections on Decca's "official" release sound marginally fuller with less tape hiss. Do the performances live up to their legend? In most ways, yes. The dream team understates the theme of Schubert's ravishing Andantino Varié, yet opens up more as the four variations effortlessly segue from one to the next.

Bach was a central part of Sviatoslav Richter’s repertoire throughout his career. Some of his very earliest recordings, on Russian 78s, were music of Bach. Some of the latest additions to his repertoire, and his last studio recordings, were also Bach. Richter began to play some of the pieces from The Well-Tempered Clavier in public as early as 1943. He did not play the complete cycle until 1973, and apparently he performed it as a cycle only a dozen times. He devoted much of 1973 to this music.

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. He was born in Zhitomir, Russia, in 1915 but grew up in Odessa. Unusually, he was largely self-taught, although his organist father provided him with a basic education in music. He started to work at the Odessa Conservatory where he accompanied the opera rehearsals. He gave his first recital in 1934 at the engineer club of Odessa but did not formally study piano until three years later, when he enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory.

The World of Romanticism” was a subtitle of the famous Svyatoslav Richter’s music festival “December Nights”. Its programme, as it was the organizers’ intent, comprised compositions by Schubert, Schumann and Chopin. Ten day were devoted to the works of each of the composers. In the beginning of the night which opened the ten days of Robert Schumann, Svyatoslav Richter presented the audience with a Viennese bouquet Blumenstück, Op. 19. That was what they used to call flower still life paintings in Germany (German die Blume stands for a flower, and das Stück – a thing) which were hugely popular in the 19th century.

Anyone who thinks that there is no longer anything to say on the subject of Sviatoslav Richter’s discography is wrong. For sixty years these recordings, which were made by Deutsche Grammophon at the Tours and Lucerne Festivals in 1965, have slumbered in the Yellow Label’s archives. Carefully restored by Emil Berliner Studios, they are being released now for the very first time. Like many other artists, Richter felt that he could play more freely and give better performances in the concert hall rather than in the studio.

Richter's austere and transcendent rendition of Beethoven Sonatas has no comparison. Reiner Maria Rilke wrote apt analogy of Beethoven's towering achievement in Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) and the exactly same can be said about Richter's incomparable performances. Highly recommendable, alongside Richter's legendary Leipzig Recital Richter in Leipzig (1963).

All of Sviatoslav Richter’s concert appearances in Prague, from his 1950 Prague Spring performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, to his 1993 performance of the Grieg concerto, were highlights of Prague’s musical life. Richter, however, enjoyed traveling to small cities, often playing on instruments whose quality would be simply unacceptable for many of today’s musical stars. His concerts were generally completely sold out and offered his listeners an extraordinary musical experience regardless of the venue or quality of the instrument. The ability to surpise his audiences again and again was an inborn part of his personality.

In 1950 Prague was the destination of the first-ever foreign trip of the then 35-year-old Russian genius pianist Sviatoslav Richter. He would subsequently visit the city on several more occasions. The recordings on this CD were made at the Rudolfinum within two weeks at the end of May and the beginning of June 1954. Richter is accompanied by the two finest Czech orchestras, conducted by two true legends – Václav Talich (nearing the end of his career) and Karel Ancerl (at the beginning of his tenure in the post of principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra).

The music of Robert Schumann and the artistry of Sviatoslav Richter are a natural match. Schumann was loathe to use flashy, purely virtuosic elements in his compositions, a fact brilliantly illustrated in the vast majority of his works for solo piano. Rather, Schumann was much more likely to tell a story, paint a picture, or read a poem through his music, although his works were not overtly programmatic. Richter possessed a technique virtually unrivaled during his career and was able to definitively toss off even the most technically demanding works. At his heart, however, Richter was a poet and an artist with profound musical insights and introspections.

Two factors should disqualify this disc immediately. First, the pieces are incomplete and out of order. Second, and arguably more crucially, the pianist misses handfuls of notes in nearly every selection and bucketfuls of notes in some. But some listeners won't care about these things because of the miracle of Sviatoslav Richter. What in another pianist would be grounds for dismissal is here cause for celebration. Check out Richter's Shostakovich: the mysterious colors of his F minor Prelude and Fugue, the fleet virtuosity of his A minor Prelude and Fugue, or the intensity of his E minor Prelude and Fugue.

This live Appassionata, from a Moscow recital of 1959, is one of the most thrilling piano performances ever recorded. Sviatoslav Richter fills every moment of the first movement with intense drama, creates the illusion of total repose in the central variations, and then takes off in the finale with an exhibition of musical virtuosity and ever-increasing tension that becomes almost unbearably intense (and unbelievably fast and accurate). The studio Pathétique is quite fine, and the Fantasy (sung in Russian!) well performed by all but still rather quaint in its effect. But don't miss that Appassionata!

The air on Mt. Olympus must have been something like that in Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche when, in September 1969, the threesome of Richter, Oistrakh and Rostropovich joined Herbert von Karajan for this majestic recording of Beethoven’s underrated Triple Concerto. That there could have been such a meeting of the minds in this gathering of greats is difficult to believe, until one remembers that the three soloists were frequent collaborators who all spoke the same musical language, and after years in the trenches knew each other and their conductor very well. As one would expect, the solo work of the three Russians is brilliant and deeply musical. But just as delightful is the way they adjust from solo to ensemble roles and play together, with perfect unanimity, in the duet and trio passages. Karajan and the Berliners provide a monumental accompaniment, weighty, powerful, and rich in tone. The recording, one of the best from EMI in this venue, has been remastered in exemplary fashion and is impressively detailed and vivid.