Sviatoslav Richter: A Pianist Who Made the Earth Move (2015)

Sviatoslav Richter: The Pianist Who Made The Earth Move

It was in Carnegie Hall and Sviatoslav Richter was playing the piano. But because of Richter’s German origins, the death of his father at the hands of the secret police and his friendship with such artists as Boris Pasternak — a writer whose novel Dr. Zhivago made him a “non-person” in the Soviet Union — the pianist himself was politically suspect and not permitted to travel to the West until 1960, several years after appearances by Gilels and other Soviet musicians. There was his Liszt Sonata, which was so powerful because Richter’s huge hands — easily spanning a twelfth — could play the composer’s daunting double octaves without the physical strain that betrayed other pianists.

Source: www.npr.org