On June 24 Naxos of America, Inc. distributor for Medici Arts, releases three films on Medici’s new Classical Archive series featuring pianists Sviatoslav Richter, Tatiana Nikolayeva, and Alexis Weissenberg.
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) was, unquestionably, one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.
A complicated and temperamental man, Richter strictly avoided being filmed. The circumstances of this Barbican recital were far from ideal: Richter, who was known to cancel concerts at a moment’s notice, was apparently unaware until shortly before the concert that it was to be filmed. After a considerable and heated discussion, he agreed to the filming on the condition that no camera would be in his field of vision. This challenge was overcome at the expense of the film crew, who were accustomed to expending thousands of watts of lighting power when televising such an event. Richter insisted on restricting the lighting to a single 40-watt bulb, focused not on him, but on his music. This eccentric lightening was unconventional even without cameras present, but it was his standard practice at concerts, as he wanted to focus maximum attention on the music and de-emphasize the importance of the performer. It also served to mask his use of a score, a practice he implemented in 1979 after a memory lapse at a concert.

This 1989 London recital features Richter in performances of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, K 282, K 545, K 310; Chopin’s Études, Op.10: No.1 to No.6 and No.10 to No.12, and Études Op.25: Nos. 5, 6, 8, 11. Bonus material includes a BBC broadcast from1969 with Richter performing Chopin’s Étude, Op. 10, Nos. 4 and 12; and Rachmaninoff’s Étude-Tableau, Op. 39, No.3.

Richter enthusiasts will enjoy comparing the Barbican performance of Chopin’s Étude, Op. 10, No. 4 to the performance included in the bonus material, which features Richter at his peak in 1969. Richter closes the Barbican recital with a towering performance of Chopin’s Étude, Op. 25/11 in A minor, which brings the house down, highlighting his legendary artistry.

The distinguished pianist, composer, and teacher Tatiana Nikolayeva (1924-1993) represents the wealth of piano talent to flood from the former Soviet Union during the 20th century.

Shostakovich’s cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues always held a special place in Nikolayeva’s heart: she inspired and premiered the work in Leningrad in 1952, and it was the piece she performed when she died in concert in San Francisco in 1993. She also made three recordings of the work. The lifelong friendship between Shostakovich and Nikolayeva began when the 26-year-old pianist won first prize at the 1950 Bach Piano competition, organized in Leipzig for the bicentennial of the German composer’s death. As a member of the jury, Shostakovich (1906-1975) was so impressed and inspired by her playing that he returned to Moscow to compose his own set of Preludes and Fugues in 1950/51. This DVD features a broadcast recording from December 1992 of the complete cycle and includes more of Shostakovich’s music played by Tatiana Nikolayeva in a documentary bonus film.

Born in 1929 in Sofia, Bulgaria, pianist Alexis Weissenberg studied both in Bulgaria and Jerusalem before attending The Juilliard School, where he studied with famed pedagogue Olga Samaroff (conductor Leopold Stokowki’s first wife).

This extraordinary document features a 1965 film by Swedish filmmaker and former assistant to Ingmar Bergman, Åke Falck, which shows Mr. Weissenberg performing the Petrushka Suite. The shooting took 10 days and required a special “silent” piano be built; Weissenberg performed in sync with a playback of his actual performance, while he listened through loudspeakers set at a distance from him (the viewer learns much more about the making of the film in the bonus material). The result is an amazing feat of both pianism and filmmaking, which brings the complexity of Stravinsky’s fiendishly difficult piano score into sharp focus (he transcribed the Petrushka Suite note-for-note from the orchestral version). .

In addition to Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, the film includes other archival performances taken from various broadcast sources from the 1960s, which feature repertoire including Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 3; Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9, No. 2; Rachmaninoff’s Prelude, Op. 23, No.6; Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 - Largo, Nocturne Op. Posth. in C minor, Étude, Op. 25, No. 7; J.S. Bach’a Chromatic Fantasy, BWV 903, Partita No.6 - Courante; and the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 83, with the Orchestre National de l’ORTF, Georges Prêtre, conductor - 8/31/69

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Helikopter-Streichquartett is one of the most controversial and talked-about works of art in recent years. Composed for the Arditti Quartet and premiered at the 1995 Holland Festival, it involves the four members of the quartet playing in four different helicopters in flight. The music each member plays is sent to a central space and mixed at a sound board.

In his film Helicopter String Quartet, Frank Scheffer documents the complex preparations in the month leading up to the premiere of this work, eliciting insights from the composer on its conception and execution. Stockhausen tells Scheffer that the idea came to him in a dream about musicians who could fly. He subsequently produced a fascinatingly original score in which the music for each instrument is written in a different color, and in which the four string lines frequently jump from one staff to the other in imitation of birds flying in formation. Stockhausen also analyzes the content of the work for Scheffer, highlighting how the writing for the quartet merges with the sonic characteristics of the helicopters. Scheffer goes behind the scenes and, stage by stage, depicts the enormous effort behind the realization of Helikopter-Streichquartett.