CD Review: Liszt Piano Concertos etc Richter/Kondrashin/LSO

Chopin:Andante Spinato and Grande Polonaise in E flat,Op.22 Liszt:Piano Concertos Nos.1&2, Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Melodies, S123 Sviatoslav Richter, Piano London Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin BBC Legends (BBCL4031) Mono (Mid Price)

In the summer of 1961,Sviatoslav Richter, one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, finally overcame years of Soviet red tape and ambivalence to make his belated London concert debut. Off-air pirate recordings of the original BBC broadcasts have been available for decades. These 'official' digitally re-mastered transfers hail from the original BBC Archive Masters. The remastered mono sound and recording I'm pleased to say is generally very good, but not ideal; the piano sound is fine but perhaps too forward in the balance and the orchestral panorama could do with more breadth or depth, instead of tending towards constricted (perhaps a problem of engineering the Royal Albert Hall with its notorious acoustic).

The Chopin is idiosyncratic (since when was Richter otherwise) and mesmerising, and won't be to all Chopin 'purists' tastes. Richter ravishes a mesmerising hypnotic legato over the Andante Spinato, whilst the Grande Polonaise is refreshingly noble, reserved, and curiously introspective,less swashbuckling and swaggering than the norm in say Horowitz or Rubinstein's hands. The Liszt concertos? Hmmm, one word masterful. The most famous classical pianist of all time's knucklebustingly mercurial, and dynamic concertos get treated to live performances of remarkable white hot intensity in a fantastic collaboration between soloist, conductor, and orchestra. Listen to Richter's spontaneous interplay and rapport with Kondrashin, the LSO and its soloists, the legato, the driven fury/intensity, the awesome passagework, the sense of stillness and respose Richter distils at a flick of switch after passages of high drama and dynamism, Richters interplay with the solo Cello in the Second Concerto. Yikes, theres an abundance of fascinating moments and passages to choose from. The Hungarian Fantasia is an apt encore with similar levels of spontinaeity, excitement, and an added dollop of tongue in cheek spirit.

Interestingly, Richter made a classic studio recording of the Liszt Concertos with the same forces for Philips Classics with the Mercury recording team the day after the performances. In a case of lightning striking twice, the same qualities and brilliance exhibited in these performances are on show in the studio recordings, lacking the added frisson and spontaneity of live music making, but improving with better balanced and engineered stereo sound. I'd recommend both recordings to anybody interested, but if one had to choose it would be this issue. Live, no studio gimmicks, in the concert hall one could almost be convinced Liszt wrote the pieces as a showcase for Richter and his unique pianism.