This is Richter’s first recording of the grandest of Mozart’s piano concertos and is therefore of special interest. All the same, those looking for a breathtaking play of light and shade or, indeed, for a reading alive with expressive nudges and nuances, will look in vain. Ever conscious of Mozart’s Maestoso direction, Richter ploughs a serene and uncompromising furrow through the first movement. The development is notably remorseless and the lack of a cadenza, on the grounds that Mozart failed to supply one, seems unnecessarily puritanical. A touch of discreet decoration near the close of the Andante is Richter’s one concession to a more open-hearted affection. Otherwise his audience at Parma’s Teatro Regio had to make do with a reading of stately and stalwart integrity rather than Mozartian revelation (of the sort so readily supplied by Murray Perahia, most princely of Mozart interpreters, for example).
Fortunately Richter’s Bach is another matter. Here, his famous metronomic severity which supposedly prompted Emil Gilels to refer to him as “the policeman of pianists” is complemented by an almost palpable sense of enjoyment and in the slow movements, in particular, a total engagement with the music’s still centre. In the first movement of the D major the sudden cessation of activity at 5'37'' is made all the more telling because of its surrounding resolution, and at 2'16'' in the Adagio Richter achieves a rare stillness and transparency. The chromatic descent at 1'35'' in the Andante of the G minor Concerto, too, is played with great delicacy and both finales are alive with rhythmic ebullience and happiness in music-making.
The recordings are more than adequate given the circumstances, the audience admirably well-behaved, though their silence at the end of the Mozart adds to the overall air of solemnity, a quality confirmed in Walter Dobner’s high-minded accompanying notes.'