Monster at the keyboard

Sviatoslav Richter is to many people the pianist of the century. He had one of the widest repertoires in the business, was a friend of Prokofiev and played at Stalin's funeral.

Glenn Gould called him 'one of the most powerful communicators the world of music has produced in our time'. He was certainly one of the most enigmatic. 'He was a mystery to everyone,' says French film-maker Bruno Monsaingeon, who - against all the odds - managed to capture the 82-year-old pianist on film shortly before his death two years ago.

Monsaingeon's award-winning portrait, Richter, The Enigma, provides a unique and gripping record of a man whose musical life spanned the century.

In his whole life, Richter gave no more than a handful of press interviews. He was not discovered by the West until the early sixties. Even then, he shunned big orchestras and important venues, preferring to perform in village churches and provincial schools. He was famous for cancelling concerts at the last minute, and was rumoured to sleep on the floor of his hotel rooms. After a disappointing concert, it was said, he would return to where he was staying and play the whole programme again.

Monsaingeon, a concert violinist who decided early in his career to combine performing with film-making, had long dreamed of making a film with Richter. They had met several times in the seventies, and the pianist had even paid one, rather disastrous, visit to his Paris flat to rehearse a duet with the Hungarian pianist Zoltan Kocsis.

'I left them after 10 minutes,' Monsaingeon recalls, 'and when I came back, the house was unrecognisable. Richter had broken everything. He was absolutely furious because somebody had come up and said it was too noisy.' But when Monsaingeon approached Richter's entourage to inquire about the possibility of making a film, he was advised: 'Just forget about it.' It was years later that, out of the blue, he got a call informing him that Richter wanted him to 'do' his biography.

Since it wasn't clear what 'do' meant, Monsaingeon sent Richter a letter outlining his ideas for a biography, without knowing whether it would turn out to be a book or a film. He concluded it with a passage from Proust about interpretation. Unbeknown to him, Proust was also one of Richter's passions. The next day another call came: 'Maestro wants to see you immediately.' It was the beginning of a close, if difficult relationship, which lasted right up until Richter's death. Monsaingeon recalls his first visit to Richter's hotel room. 'There, marked out on the piano, were his daily instructions: 'Brush teeth thoroughly every day, read some Proust and Thomas Mann every day, etcetera.' ' Though Richter was gay, he lived with the singer Nina Dorliac for nearly 50 years.

Well aware of Richter's petulant nature, as well as his refusal to be filmed, Monsaingeon initially taped their conversations. When he broached the subject of filming them, Richter was non-committal, so Monsaingeon decided to take the initiative by installing a hidden camera. Getting Richter to talk, however, proved to be 'a nightmare'. Most of the time, he would say nothing but 'Yes' or 'I suppose so'.

He also had a knack of saving choice anecdotes for the wrong moments. During dinner at a restaurant one evening, Richter launched into a story about reading through Shostakovich's 9th Symphony with the composer. Ignoring Monsaingeon's plea to save it for the film, he described how Shostakovich kept filling his glass with cognac and how he collapsed in the gutter on his way home and spent most of the night there. The next day, when the camera was rolling, nothing could induce him to repeat the story.

Fortunately, Monsaingeon did manage to squeeze a number of other anecdotes out of him on film. He also got Richter to read passages from his diary and skilfully mixed this footage with concert performances, home videos and Soviet archive material to trace his life.

Richter was born in Ukraine in 1915, the son of a professional pianist. He claims he never studied, but simply started playing by launching in to a Chopin Nocturne. At the age of 15, he worked as an accompanist at the Odessa Opera, where he was often paid in bags of potatoes. He studied with Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory, and at 19 gave his first public recital. His reputation was made in 1941 with his first performance of one of Tchaikovsky's piano concerti.

In 1953, he played at Stalin's funeral, where, it has widely been reported, he was nearly shot dead after refusing to stop in mid-recital. Monsaingeon believes the story is a lot of nonsense. 'I think the main reason for him wanting his biography 'done' was that he probably felt he wouldn't live for long and wanted a few rumours about him corrected.' In the film, Richter says he simply went home for a shower after the funeral. He did, however, have to put some sheet music under the piano pedal to make it work.

Richter's humour is evident throughout. He describes Prokofiev as 'interesting and dangerous' and says that Shostakovich was 'a man whose eyes had no pupils' ('I felt very ill at ease in his presence'). He also explains why he rarely played with large orchestras: 'They are always booked when I'm available. Or else, they say, 'In five years' time.' And I hate planning in advance.' Indeed, Monsaingeon says that Richter rarely knew what he was doing from one day to the next. His childlike nature was coupled with a lack of pretension and a love of gossip and scandal. 'He was incredibly curious about everything. When he travelled by car, he would not only look at the cathedrals and lovely buildings, but be very interested by any kind of industrial site.' The last night they spent together in Paris, he took Monsaingeon to a drag cabaret.

He was, however, completely indifferent to political events (Monsaingeon doubts he even knew who Brezhnev was) and to money, refusing to see an American impresario who had offered half a million dollars for two concerts at the Carnegie Hall, even though he was strapped for cash. 'One of his major characteristics was freedom,' declares Monsaingeon. 'He would not yield to pressure of any kind, whether political, material or artistic.' He apparently found it hard to understand why anyone would be afraid of the Soviet authorities.

Monsaingeon had planned to shoot some final footage with Richter in Russia in the summer of 1997. But the day before he was due to arrive, Richter died of a heart attack. A few months earlier, Monsaingeon had shown him a rough cut of the film. 'He said the most touching thing that I could have expected,' Monsaingeon recalls. ' 'Eto ya' - 'Yes, that's me!' '

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