Sviatoslav Richter and Heinrich Neuhaus

There's a Russian saying: 'You lack ten roubles, you've one hundred friends.'
Wherever I went, even at the height of the war, I always found a potato to eat. I didn't mind not having a home. I slept wherever people would have me: At Anatoly Vedernikov's, at Volodya Tchaikovsky's, at the home of the mathematician Igor Shafarevich. I felt comfortable everywhere. Above all, however, I was put up by Neuhaus for several years. He was so generous that his pupils could call on him without warning, even at four in the morning. His wife was equally amazing and welcoming. She never slept; if you turned up in the middle of the night, she'd be drinking tea or wine and was delighted for people to come. And she'd say to you:'You've nowhere to sleep? Well, you can spend the night here.' They had a tiny flat.
At Neuhaus's, I slept under the piano.

=============================================================

Emil Gilels was also another one of Neuhaus's students at the Conservatory. But he was a complex individual, had a frightful temperament, was extremely touchy and always sulking. He was pathologically jealous.
With Neuhaus he behaved appallingly badly. Towards the end of Neuhaus's life, he did something dreadful. He wrote to the papers and also to Neuhaus in person, saying that he'd never been his pupil. Everyone in Moscow knew that he had been Neuhaus's pupil and hey were all indignant. When I heard what he'd done, I refused to acknowledge Gilels in the street. Neuhaus was terribley affected by it and died soon afterwards.

=============================================================

(the circumstances surrouding Gilels' death) are appalling. Before setting off on a tour, he went to hospital for a checkup. He was given and injection and 3 minutes later he was dead. It was the Kremlin Hospital. Everyone knows that the doctors there are chosen because of their political background. The result is that, through sheer incompetence, they gave him the wrong injection and killed him.

===========================================================

Neuhaus was of German and Polish extraction, a cousin of Szymanowski. In his youth he had been friendly with Horowitz and close to Artur Rubinstein. He studied in Russia, Berlin, Italy and Vienna where he was a pupil of Leopold Godowsky. He was immensly cultured and widely read in literature, philosophy and the arts. He spoke fluent Russian, Polish, German, French and Italian.

You might have thought his small hands would have had an adverse effect on his playing. But nothing could be further from the truth. He produced a magnificient tone. It's to him that I owe this habit of sitting upright at the piano. He was right, everything depends on this.