Sviatoslav Richter: A Pianist Who Made the Earth Move (2015)

It's not just a matter of slow/fast, because when you pick a tempo, this allows adopting solutions that would be awkward at a different speed. (Using a programmer's analogy, picking a tempo is like entering different branches of a very deep tree).

To understand this, consider bars 185ff in the development section. Here, after a long passage where another theme dominated the scene, the main theme returns two times: first in d minor, then in B-flat major. How do the pianists play this passage?

- Kovacevich (https://youtu.be/MAZ8PA5_gVA?t=744) play the d-minor and the B-flat phrases quite in the same way.

- Brendel (https://youtu.be/TKy0Lyl4g-s?t=443) and Richter (https://youtu.be/ZbJtHzaFpBQ?t=983) play the second one much softer than the first, as if the B-flat phrase were a distant echo, or a timid answer, of the d-minor one.

- Uchida (https://youtu.be/l7cc2FD06FM?t=812) plays both occurrences very softly as if the composer wanted to remind the listener of the long-forgotten theme.

What I am trying to show here is that, apart from speed, there are many other subtle ways a pianist expresses what the composer meant. This kind of nuances can be very hard to spot, but adopting Richter's tempo makes easier to appreciate them.

However, by all reports Chopin's hands were special, and an anatomical key to his success. In At the Piano with Chopin, composer Stephen Heller is cited as extolling how Chopin's slim hands would "suddenly expand and cover a third of the keyboard. It was like the opening of the mouth of a serpent about to swallow a rabbit whole." A student, Adolf Gutmann, also reportedly said Chopin's "whole body was extraordinarily flexible."

Regardless of the size of the keyboard, bigger hands will always cover more keys.

There are pianos with slimmer keys that may be more suitable for those with small hands (e.g. women). It’s just hard to change a legacy design and push it to the masses. Of course if you’re at the top of the game you can get custom keyboards easily but it’s hard (and expensive) to justify for customisation if you’re just learning the keyboard

Well, you probably don’t want to make the keys much narrower, since it’s pretty important to be able to hit one specific key with one specific finger.

When I play guitar while reading sheet music or tabs, I often glaze over what's actually on the paper or on the screen but still "read" it faintly -- Take away the guide or make me look at my hands and I'm helplessly lost, however.

I have a pet theory that it's more about flow and some kind of vision-muscle memory.

His sense of absolute pitch shifted in later age, leaving him constantly unsure as to the correctness of the notes he was playing. The music was intended to be a check against any confusion arising from this. At least this is what he claims. Would be interesting to know if this was necessarily entirely psychological or not.

Let me compensate the lack of Richter with a Richter recording that is not [1] a Schubert composition. Variations Serieuses (Mendelssohn Bartholdy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9qEIcgSXLU

[1] I love Schubert, best composer ever in my opinion. Unfortunately, Richter couldn't Play "Tod und das Mädchen" (death and the maiden)