My mother loved classical music. My sisters and I grew up listening to her LP record collection of Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart and various opera recordings including her beloved Pavarotti. I don't know where she got this love of music from, but it was always around us and we never questioned it.I can still visualise the covers of some of the albums she had. I think my sister has most of them stored in her loft as LPs are pretty much obsolete now.
My sister excitedly emailed me recently about a programme she'd watched on Sky Arts about organ works of Bach by Karl Richter. The name was incredibly familiar to me, I remember vividly the record our Mam had of his Bach recordings. "How wonderful" my sister said, "to be able to see Richter playing the Toccata & Fuge in D Minor", which we both knew by heart. I don't have a TV, and the programme wasn't listed in the Sky Arts iplayer menu.
A couple of weeks later while surfing around on Youtube, I thought, why not search for Richter? Straightaway I found the Toccata recording. Seeing it was almost indescribable and full of emotion. By the end I was in floods of tears, remembering my mother, the beauty of the piece, and the absolutely wonderful discovery of this amazing man.
I had a week off work and in that time I've scoured the internet for anything to do with this remarkable musician. What a tragedy that he was taken from us so early at aged only 54, but he will live on forever in what he left behind. I've so enjoyed my discovery of the man and his incredible work. Long live Karl Richter!
Many thanks to Johannes Martin for his wonderful blog on Richter http://karlrichtermunich.blogspot.com/
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