I worship Richter ☺️😇🙏

"It's just music. It's playing clean and looking for the pretty notes." - Charlie Parker

I love Richter. His clarity and intensity never distract from his musicality. He is sublime.

His excellent performance reminds me of the Wilhelm Backhaus recording of this same sonata.

I wouldn't be so fond of Scriabin's 5th piano sonata without Richter, as an example of how he made me appreciate or even love repertoires I couldn't grasp at first.

Always fun and educational to watch your vids!

Thanks!

Pianists don’t have tone. Pianos have tone.

Richter makes it look so easy!

May I ask on what grounds you style yourself "piano professor"?

I have no idea why I am saying this, but for some reason Richter's playing reminded me of someone playing Scarlatti on a harpsichord.

me again - could you react to Schubert sonata d960 by Sviatoslav

The logic behind right hand, you mentioned. This is record from 1976, Moscow conservatory hall recital.

Richter very clearly takes the first B♭ with the right hand.

Why?
1. To unify the gesture
Richter seems to regard the opening not as:
left hand accompaniment +
right hand melody,
but rather as one single upward impulse. By taking the B♭ with the right hand, the entire ascending figure belongs to one hand and acquires extraordinary continuity.

2. To free the left hand
The left hand can remain planted on the low F octave, producing a deeper, darker bass without having to jump immediately to the B♭.

3. Tone production
Richter was obsessed with sound. Having the right hand play the B♭ allows him to shape the phrase almost vocally, with a very smooth connection from B♭ to A♭.

4. It is perfectly legitimate
Beethoven specifies the notes, rhythm, articulation, and dynamics—not which hand must play each note

Other reasons:

Better legato
Having the right hand take the B♭ can make the ascending figure feel more unified and vocal.

Greater left-hand stability
The left hand can remain relaxed on the bass F octave without stretching or moving upward immediately.

Phrasing
Richter often thought in terms of musical line rather than strict division between the hands. For him, hand distribution was subordinate to sound.

The first movement is obviously related to the Mozart c minor sonata, especially the opening motif.

But the 2nd movement is pure Beethoven, its hymnal and noble  character could have been composed by nobody else. The minuetto is again pure Beethoven, and the sheer virtuosity of the last movement with its passionate intensity leaves Mozart and Haydn far behind. From the very start, Beethoven opened up a wider range of emotion than anyone had thought possible. The form is still classical but the emotional force is Byronic.

Three pieces, why Richter was so unimaginably great MUSICIAN .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr2OUvr8H1c&list=RDDr2OUvr8H1c&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdhwqjhx-Xc&list=RDDr2OUvr8H1c&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAcYjH_mV1o

i'm not a very skilled pianist, but have attempted big swaths of virtually every LvB sonata, incuding the titanic ones op.106,op.53, op. 57, op.109-111.... I don't claim to play them well, but prbably have a decent enough technique and grasp of music theory thay i'm in the ballpark of a creditable advanced amateur performance level.I've always found the dificulties of op.2, no.1 underrated. I find it very, very awkard to play. the runs in the first movement aresort of jagged against left hand three-note figurs that are accented against the other rhythmic elements in the passage, and the broken octaves in the development are awkard against the arppegiated chords in the right hand; and some of the notes in the development are confusing enough thhat different editions resolve the confusions differently. Similar difficulties in the other 3 movements. People assume the first sonata will be the easiest, but as Beethoven wrote more and more, his musical ideas blendeda bit more organically with the physical aspects of playing, and howthe hand actually moves. Plus, the pianist is much moe exposed in the 1srt sonata (in a Mozartean ind of way) than is virtually all the other sonatas. Andrei Gavrilov once remarkedthat the first fugue in Well-Tempered Clavier (despite being accomanied by the simplest prelude, in C-major) and being in C-major, is one of the most awkard and challenging to play in the WTC. It seems like a similar issue with LvB's 1st sonata. IOne may struggle with it and be tempted to assume the sonatas get harder and harder.in a sense that's true, but not in every sense. Where passags in this sonata are hard to play, Beethoven wrote less and less of the specific types of awkward elents. Playing op2 no.1 convincingly, in other words is one of the Beethoven piano corpus's most hidden challenges.

Which pianist should I react to next?

He had a very tragic life. Being abandoned by your own mother is not easy

Shouldn't play the 4th note on those turns with the same finger as the 2nd. Better is: 3213. Richter cheats, though, using RH.

https://youtu.be/_nWT47RTmk4?is=uyTFPBptBAaGon3c

To understand the Russian piano school  look at this lesson about one Rachmaninoff prelude.

It is Professor Lev Naumov, Moscow conservatory, the Andrei Gavrilov's teacher.
Translation available.

Do you know what is the treachery thing about Richter? The moment you think "Oooo this is so wrong", actually, the Richter is goddamn right.

The Richter's life was a hell. At least until mid sixties. No sugar, no Horowitz madness, Brendel so called "aristocrat of nothing" or the enormous Barenboim ego.

Richter had his ups and down, but he deserves respect because without any doubt whatsoever, he was the greatest pianist of the 20th century, after the 1943 death of Rachmaninoff .

If you want one record only,
listen of his Second Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto, with Wislocki, 1958.
Really, the 20th Century piano record.

https://youtu.be/rxL9sKROKkE?is=2GNHo6oK4MyApa3F

Listen also

https://youtu.be/vbcM-qIPZDM?is=5GGGig1Dra1t6aVc

I dislike Richter's  rhythm control of the 1st subject… Beethoven's triplets are semiquavers after a dotted crotchet. Richter played the triplets as quavers after a crotchet (not dotted) so that his triplets ALL begin WITH the LH chord rather than ½ way between 2 crotchet chords. Pollini in his recordings managed with correct precision in better more brisk allegro tempo

A few things of interest, among many, I will remark upon. Interesting you mentioned the recording process and output. I recall many years of listening to what we call "classical" music before attending a live concert. The experience at first was, "this sounds wrong, not like a record." Actually, it sounds better live with the acoustics, the way it was meant to be. Recordings are at best compromises and then, of course, one's reproduction equipment. Second, one congratulates your pedology background as "not knowing" or adjusting what you do know. Refreshing and remarkable these days when claims of absolute certainty are made. Back when I was coming up, most pianists were male. I was under sway of Glenn Gould (whom you've done) until I heard his Beethoven and Mozart, just pretty much awful. But onward. You've done one female, but how about Yuja Wang? There is showmanship as well as technical skill involved.

I must say, you need to study him, instead of "analysing" him. Many of you simply does not understand damn thing, why he does one or another thing "this way" not "the other way".
Beacuse you have one rigid way to "do things". But your approach does not work whatsoever. If you study carefully the score, you will understand his approach.

Without any doubt, Richter with Rachmaninoff are the two gretest pianists of the 20th Century.