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.

It's hard to believe that any pianist, living or dead (or, probably, yet-to-be-born) could match, much less surpass, these performances. It was Richter, after all, who made Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition almost as important an item in the standard repertory of the piano as Ravel's orchestration is in that of the orchestra. And it was Richter's performances of it, as well as his example, that have ignited the interest of subsequent generations of pianists in the Bunte Blätter, heretofore one of the most obscure works in the Schumann canon.

For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903-1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭ major, Op. 83, by Johannes Brahms is separated by a gap of 22 years from his first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna. It took him three years to work on this concerto, which indicates that he was always self-critical. He wrote to Clara Schumann: "I want to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo." Ironically, he was describing a huge piece. This concerto is dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. The public premiere of the concerto was given in Budapest on 9 November 1881, with Brahms as soloist and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, and was an immediate success. He proceeded to perform the piece in many cities across Europe.

Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was born on March 20, 1915 (Julian: March 7) in Zhitomir in present-day Ukraine. His father Teofil (Theophilus) came from a German commercial family. The famous Russian piano teacher Heinrich Neuhaus (of German origin) recognized his huge talent and enrol led him in his piano master cl ass at the Moscow Conservatory in 1 937. Profil Edition Gunter Hanssl er is progressively releasing all the recordings that the great Soviet virtuoso made between 1945 and 1963. Most of them were largely unknown in the West during the Cold War, as Richter could only perform til I 1960 behind the ""Iron Curtain"", that is to say, in the Soviet Union and the sate I lite states of Eastern Europe.

Richter, when he was 46 years old, played in the United States, where all the great pianists of the day were known. Yet the arrival of Richter left them all astonished. Astonished before a greatness rich in novelty, excess, and defects. Many scholars saw Richter as a crazy genius who couldn't be taken entirely seriously. Many critics and a part of the public had to make the note easy effort of changing their parameters of judgment. Some critics, and the majority of the public were overwhelmed by the effects of that mysterious power we call charisma. And so Richter became Richter. On this release are beautiful masterpieces, the history of pianism at its finest.

Back in the '50s and '60s when RCA was one of the two dominant American classical record companies, the big debate was over which of their two recordings of Brahms Piano Concerto in B flat major was better: the Emil Gilels with Fritz Reiner from 1958 or the Sviatoslav Richter with Leinsdorf from 1960. Both are with the Chicago Symphony at the peak of its strength and sensitivity.

All of Rachmaninov’s music - from his earliest student compositions to his final masterpieces – has been collected together for the first time on 32 CDs, in what is definitively the most complete and comprehensive edition of Rachmaninov’s works ever released.

Dvorák's early Quintet is here taken a little too seriously at times, but Richter and the Borodins revel in the riches of its glorious successor. Recorded live in clear but thin digital sound.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100, in Soviet Russia in one month in the summer of 1944. Fourteen years had passed since Prokofiev wrote the first version of his Symphony No. 4 in C major. World War II was still raging during the symphony's gestation, and Prokofiev composed it in the Soviet Union. He gave out in a statement at the time that he intended it as "a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit." He added "I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamoured for expression. The music matured within me. It filled my soul.

It's a wonderful treat to find an album whose interest rests equally on its musical as well as historical merits. As such, the present two-disc sets of the complete Rachmaninoff concertos and Paganini Rhapsody cannot be beat. The three pianists heard here – Richter, Zak, and Oborin – represent the pinnacle of postwar Russian pianists. Richter is most likely the one still known to the majority of American listeners. But Zak (who was immensely influential not only as a performer but as a pedagogue) and Oborin (who was the first winner of the Chopin Competition) were recognized equally during their lifetimes. All three had a profound and obvious command of Rachmaninoff, and the performances heard here clearly demonstrate this fact.

The name of Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) appears at the head of virtually everyone’s shortlist of the world’s great pianists. In the West, the legend began, then gathered force, during the 1950s, when it was rumoured that there was a pianist in Russia who caused even such formidable colleagues as Emil Gilels to exclaim in awe and amazement. Expectations were raised still higher when Julius Katchen and later Lazar Berman claimed that Richter was, quite simply, a nonpareil, a pianist whose titanic powers forbade even whispered comparisons.