Sviatoslav Richter's Study

Richter's study, which he used to call the cupboard room, is full of cases and cupboards containing books, records of his performances, scores, concert evening dress, and presents from friends and admirers.

The secretaire next to Picasso's Dove contains the manuscript of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 9 with a dedication to Sviatoslav Richter. Here too is a copy of Solzhenitsyn's Krokhotki signed by the author. And over the secretaire is a contra-relief of Boris Pasternak by the sculptor Sarra Lebedeva.

The wooden figure of John the Baptist to the right of the secretaire is a momento of the music fes­tival in Touraine, with a small etude by Martiros Sariyan above it. Then there are the books. Richter was a real bookworm: Thomas Mann, Turgenev, Pushkin, Chekhov (his favourite story was “Fear”), Blok, Pasternak, Voloshin, Veresayev, Balzac, Maurois, Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Bulgakov and Gogol are just a few of the names you will find on the shelves in the study

He was particularly fond of Proust. According to N.D.Zhuravlyova, rather than waiting for a Russian translation of the novel Time Regained, Richter read it in German. In July 1997 Eliso Virsaladze read him Maeterlinck at Nikolina Gora. The last book he read for himself was Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.