The Lost Recordings
Sviatoslav Richter - Live In East Germany Vol. 1 [Sapphiere Edition]

Sviatoslav Richter was always an exception. At no point in his life did he follow in the footsteps of others, whether musicians, writers, or politicians. Until he was fifteen, he contented himself with practicing the piano alone in Odessa – as a self-taught musician. He was actually supposed to become a painter, but no one really took notice of him during the civil war. He developed a passion for opera and became an outstanding accompanist at the Odessa Opera as well as for several ballet companies. How did it come to be that in 1937, at the age of twenty-two, he found himself standing before Heinrich Neuhaus, that preeminent professor at the Moscow Conservatory? No one knows. History merely records that, during Richter’s audition, the master is said to have whispered to the man next to him: “In my opinion, this is a brilliant musician.” It did nothing to change his character. Until the end of his life, he remained a completely free spirit, almost an enigma. In the mid-1960s, Sviatoslav Richter was fifty years old and had only recently begun performing on stages around the world. His playing was likely at its peak, both in power and in subtlety. And this was with two composers who hold a special place in his immense repertoire: Sergei Rachmaninoff and Franz Schubert. To conclude these two concerts, the final word must go to the man who understood how to set Richter apart from all others: his teacher, Heinrich Neuhaus. He was more aware of his student’s extraordinary talent than anyone else and wrote words about him whose accuracy remains impressive to this day: “His singular capacity to grasp the whole while losing nothing of the smallest details of a composition suggests a comparison with an eagle who, from his great height, can see as far as the horizon and yet make out the least detail of the landscape.”
Truth and legend are intertwined in the story of Sviatoslav Richter: expelled twice from the conservatory for refusing to show “political” obedience, “forgotten” when it came time to embark on a tour of the United States, traveled thousands of miles on the roads of Europe with his piano in tow, engaged in verbal skirmishes with Karajan, and spent entire weeks in seclusion at his dacha, with his instrument as his sole companion. *The Lost Recordings* brings to light for the first time recordings that are extraordinary in more ways than one. In the archives of East German Radio, analog audio tapes of two previously unreleased concerts were discovered. As Bruno Monsaingeon writes in the text accompanying his film Richter: The Enigma: “He fears nothing and offers no hold on himself; that will be his great strength. Allergic to any kind of planning, he plays where and when he pleases.” Richter expects nothing and strives for nothing other than to serve the music. His discipline borders on obsession: he counted the hours spent at the piano so he could make up for the ones he’d missed the next day. Time and again, he admitted: “I am a mirror.” For him, the performer is nothing more than an executor: “He must not dominate the music, but must dissolve into it.” Frédéric D’Oria-Nicolas, the musical treasure hunter behind The Lost Recordings, says of this discovery: “In January 2026 – thanks to the persistence of Michel Navarra and Ulf Drechsel and after more than two years of work – we were finally able to listen to the first original tapes from the archives of the former GDR, not far from Berlin. Among the 80 selected tapes are the names of David Oistrakh, Evgeny Mravinsky, Leonid Kogan, and Sviatoslav Richter. We are proud to present here the first part of these previously unreleased recordings, dedicated to a true legend of the piano: Sviatoslav Richter. Richter's sound is unmistakable, with a density and a purity that call to mind stone and crystal. His interpretations are true monuments: immutable and majestic. There is something singular about his Rachmaninoff Preludes: free