Sviatoslav Richter
Repertoire

As Richter once put it, "My repertory runs to around eighty different programs, not counting chamber works." His repertoire ranged from Handel and Bach to Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Szymanowski, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Bartók, Hindemith, Britten, and Gershwin.

Richter worked tirelessly to learn new pieces. For instance, in the late 1980s, he learned Brahms 's Paganini and Handel Variations, and in the 1990s, several of Debussy 's études and pieces by Gershwin, and works by Bach and Mozart that he had not previously included in his programs.

Central to his repertoire were the works of Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, J. S. Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev and Debussy. He is said to have learned and memorized the second book of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier in one month.

He gave the premiere of Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, which he learned in four days, and No. 9, which Prokofiev dedicated to Richter. Apart from his solo career, he also performed chamber music with partners such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolf Barshai, David Oistrakh, Oleg Kagan, Yuri Bashmet, Natalia Gutman, Zoltán Kocsis, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Benjamin Britten and members of the Borodin Quartet. Richter also often accompanied singers such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schreier, Galina Pisarenko and his wife and long-time artistic companion Nina Dorliak.

Richter also conducted the premiere of Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra. This was his sole appearance as a conductor. The soloist was Rostropovich, to whom the work was dedicated. Prokofiev also wrote his 1949 Cello Sonata in C for Rostropovich, and he and Richter premiered it in 1950. Richter himself was a passable cellist, and Rostropovich was a good pianist; at one concert in Moscow at which he accompanied Rostropovich on the piano, they exchanged instruments for part of the program.
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