Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was born in Zhitomir on March 20, 1915, and died in Moscow on August 1, 1997. He became…

Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was born in Zhitomir on March 20, 1915, and died in Moscow on August 1, 1997. He became one of the most extraordinary pianists of the twentieth century, not only because of the magnitude of his technique and repertoire but because he seemed to resist almost every conventional idea of what an international virtuoso should be. He disliked publicity, distrusted the cult of personality, could abandon a famous work for decades if he became dissatisfied with it, preferred obscure provincial halls to glamorous international venues in his later years, and eventually performed almost in darkness so that an audience would concentrate on the music rather than on the pianist.