Hans Richter-Haaser first learnt music at home with his mother, then at the Dresden Music School. At thirteen he enrolled at the Dresden Academy of Music where he studied the piano with Hans Schneider. He made his debut at the age of sixteen playing Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy D. 760 and two years later won the prestigious Bechstein Prize. He performed throughout Germany, but his career was interrupted by World War II, during which he won the Iron Cross (second class), and was taken prisoner by the French. After the war, Richter-Haaser settled in Detmold where he conducted the local orchestra. A year later he began teaching piano at the North West German Music Academy, and from 1955 was a professor of piano and teacher of master-classes.

During his period of teaching Richter-Haaser pursued a performing career which began around 1953, primarily due to a broadcast concert from Holland conducted by Paul van Kempen. At his London debut he played Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto Op. 73 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and The Times hailed him as ‘a great artist’. The following January Richter-Haaser played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major Op. 58 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a young Colin Davis. A critic commented on Richter-Haaser’s lightness of touch, surmising that the soloist could have been playing one of Beethoven’s pianos. Finding the performance ‘almost too noncommittal’, he thought ‘…the total effect was one of extremely subtle and discerning musicianship.

Richter-Haaser made his debut in New York at the end of the 1950s and toured extensively in North and South America in the early 1960s, also making a tour of Australia in 1964. In February 1958 he performed with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan who invited him to record the Piano Concerto in B flat Op. 83 by Brahms. In the spring of 1960 Richter-Haaser played all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at the Wigmore Hall in London. In a review headed ‘Memories of Schnabel’, The Times critic wrote, ‘He has the same virile intelligence but a more fluent technique.’ However, when he played four of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at the Royal Festival Hall in October 1963 a review was headed ‘Limited view of Beethoven Sonatas’. It would appear that Richter-Haaser could be inconsistent and could give a highly praised performance or be accused of being ‘boring’ and ‘over-intellectual’.

Because of his increased concert schedule, Richter-Haaser gave up his teaching post at the North West German Academy of Music in 1962. He performed complete cycles of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and piano concertos, and his repertoire, although it included works by Liszt and Chopin, was based on the German Classical and Romantic composers: Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. His style was akin to that of Walter Gieseking, the later Wilhelm Backhaus and Artur Schnabel, though perhaps really closer to that of Wilhelm Kempff, as he possessed a certain spirituality and warmth which, on occasions, he breathed into his playing.

In his playing of Mozart, Richter-Haaser had a habit of playing extremely lightly, playing left hand accompanying figures in a detached fashion which led to accusations of a ‘Dresden china’ approach to Mozart. Although he rarely played contemporary music in public, in a 1967 interview Richter- Haaser said, ‘In 1932, in Dresden, when I was young and my ambition was to be a great composer, a great pianist and a great conductor, I heard Bartok play his second piano concerto, and I said, “This is my concerto”. A little later I heard Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms for the first time, and I said, “This is my symphony”. This has never happened to me again.’ As a composer Richter-Haaser wrote many piano pieces, orchestral, chamber and vocal works, and a Piano Concerto in D minor Op. 28.

One of Richter-Haaser’s best recordings is that of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat Op. 83 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan. Made in 1958, it is a recording of poise and majesty, avoiding pomposity. Richter-Haaser emphasises certain lines which always make perfect sense. However his most renowned recordings are of Beethoven. Philips reissued six of the piano sonatas on two compact discs in 1995 and Testament reissued Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos 4 and 5 which were recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Istvan Kertesz in 1960. The following year with the same forces Richter-Haaser recorded two Mozart piano concertos, and in the spring of 1963 recorded Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 Op. 37 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Carlo Maria Giulini. Richter-Haaser also recorded the Grieg and Schumann Piano Concertos with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Rudolf Moralt and these appeared on a Belart compact disc in 1993. However, there are many more recordings made for Columbia/EMI between 1958 and the mid-1960s. There are around a dozen of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, which are preferable to the Philips recordings, including the last four and the ‘Diabelli’ Variations Op. 120. Richter-Haaser takes the opening of the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata Op. 106 rather slowly, but in Op. 110 in A flat major and Op. 111 in C minor he is particularly impressive, with wonderful tone in the former and rhythmic drama in the first movement of the latter. There are also two piano sonatas by Schubert, in A minor D. 784 and C minor D. 958. For Deutsche Grammophon Richter-Haaser accompanied cellist Ludwig Hoelscher in sonatas by Brahms and Richard Strauss which prove him to be a fine chamber music performer.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).