Nostalgia Fest #1

This marks the start of an occasional series on the musical compositions that today deliver for me the most combustive thwaaaack of nostalgia. 

Sometimes I may explain the urge to pine, but I won't feel obliged to. They might not be the greatest pieces of music ever composed, but they surely speak for themselves. 

I recall that in the undergrad circles within which I mixed, we were generally rather sniffy about Rachmaninov.

Rack-jack-me-off we use to call him. 

Liking anything quite so 'Romantic' was like heading off to the National Gallery and making a b-line for the room with all the Renoirs.

And yet my best friend at Cambridge had an old vinyl copy of this LP and I soon had a CD (and cassette) of the same. 

Whatever we thought of the music it was the man behind the keys that drew us in. 

And in the light of everything that has happened since, including the passing of my friend, I'd be hard pressed to name a single record of greater significance in my life.  

I can now say that I later had the privilege of being present at two live recitals given by Sviatolslav Richter, both at the RFH. On each occasion he played from within a shimmery pool of shadows, the only strong light on the score in front of him, which he leaned towards as if encountering for the first time. 

I've witnessed a lot of great great musicians perform on that same stage — not just classical, the likes of Stan Getz and Miles Davis as well —  and Richter has been the only one to read the music as he plays. Naked showmanship? Perhaps. The resulting mood of intimacy within such a grand auditorium is what has stuck in the memory. 

On both occasions it was also the pieces he threw himself at during the encores that exhilarated beyond earlier expectation. 

On the first occasion I was with my much missed friend, then on the second I was with V when Richter was doing the rounds for the last time just a few years from his death in August '97. His fingers must have been getting a little stiff already, for his bravura rendition of one of Bartok's bagatelles seemed full of small but noticeable errors and yet was almost indescribably thrilling nonetheless. 

The summer after my friend was killed I visited his wife and (very) small child in the idyllic Hampshire village they had shared. There was a degree of awkwardness surrounding the obvious fact, which she bravely recognised, that the contents of the house (such as the piano and my friendship with her late husband) had deeper roots in his life than she did. She waved towards a pile of LPs. This one was on top.