Chopin and Debussy were, along with Wagner, the composers Richter always said meant the most to him. This remarkable compilation, more than any other I can think of, bears out that rather surprising confession.
The opening of the Third Ballade hangs languorously in the air, every note perfectly weighted and intensely alive, and the impetuosity to come is never predictable, always improvisatory in feel, with just a couple of insignificant fluffs as the price of abandon to the flow of inspiration. Similarly rapturous in their fantasy and onward momentum are the Scherzo No. 4, Mazurkas and Barcarolle.
Richter’s Debussy radiates a hypnotic power quite beyond the routinely expressive and picturesque; it’s elevated music-making of the kind given only to the very few, and every aspect of pianistic art, including wizardry with the sustaining pedal, is here at its most highly developed. Perhaps I could single out the smouldering intensity of the ‘Serenade interrompue’, initially all half-lights and heat haze, then explosive and sun-baked, and finally sexily insinuating in the serenade itself. You thought Richter was an unremittingly serious player? Try his matchlessly skittish ‘Danse de Puck’. Only in ‘La cathedrale engloutie’ is he hoist by his own petard, when he sticks doggedly to an edition which has been shown to be inaccurate and scores an uncharacteristic number of mis-hits on the way.
The 1961 Festival Hall recital concludes with Richter’s controversially frenetic view of the Chopin E major Study. This may make for uncomfortable listening, but it is based strictly on the markings in the score and follows the Vivace marking of the autograph rather than the Lento of the first publication.
These recordings are all slightly too distantly miked, but the 1962 Snape Maltings recital sounds satisfyingly immediate. Here the C sharp minor Study is so fast it almost meets itself coming back; at the other extreme the hallucinatory pedalling of the slow E flat minor prepares the way for more of Richter’s magical Debussy. However well stocked his discography may seem to be, this issue takes its place at or near the very top.'