Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonate n° 29 en si bémol majeur "Hammerklavier", op. 106

Sviatoslav Richter, piano

Sviatoslav Richter is an all-round performer who has tackled the musical repertoire from Bach to Webern, but, in the opinion of the public, and in the impression that people have of him, he is most certainly not held to be a Schnabel, a Backhaus or a Fischer, that is, a performer who is identified with the Viennese classical composers. When one think of Richter, one thinks of the Russian composers from Mussorgsky to Shostakovic or maybe of Liszt (who was the Father confessor of the Russian composers), and certainly of Schubert, but not of Mozart or of Beethoven. Yet Richter’s Beethoven repertoire, which includes twentytwo of the thirty-two sonatas and several series of variations, is enormous, and he has performed nine concertos and nine sonatas by Mozart as well as various works of lesser proportions and many violin sonatas. At the present time it is easier to see the Beethoven-Richter relationship relatively clearly. I do not know if Richter took into account the fact that Beethoven had been an avid reader of Homer, but this performance of the Hammerklavier is, without any doubt, epic. The solemn stressing of all the movements including the fugue, the stylisation of the pathos of the Adagio, the higher register which rings sharply like a vibraphone, instead of imitating the expressive tenderness of the song line make the tale an epic onem and Beethoven becomes the Homer of that Trojan War which was the French Revolution.