ELKOST International literary agency - Nov. 26: 2013 Big Book award winners announced

The 2013 Big Book literary award winners were announced tonight in Moscow.

The Third Prize for Fiction went to Yuri Buida for Thief, Spy, and Murderer.

Maya Kucherskaya with Auntie Mina (Tiotia Motia) became a winner of the People's Choice open online voting.

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The Big Book Prize is an annual literary award for the best book of any genre written in Russian. It is the largest literary award in Russia and the former Soviet countries, and the second largest literary award in the world in terms of prize money just falling behind the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Big Book is supported by various State, public and media organizations having been founded in 2005 by the Centre for the Support of Russian Literature. Nominees for the award are authors, publishers, media, creative unions, and governmental bodies of the Russian Federation.

Featured titles

By Richter's Side. Dialogues with Sviatoslav Richter by Yuri Borisov (2003, 2011)

Rights sold: France – ACTES SUD, Japan – ONGAKU NO TOMO, Russia – RUTENA, AZBOOKA, Spain – ACANTILADO

Richter shared with his younger friend the stories of his childhood, and recollections of his meetings with other celebrities (Britten, Fischer-Dieskau, Gavrilov, Michelangeli, Picasso, Prokofiev, Serkin, Sofronitski, Vedernikov, Yudina, etc.). He explained his vision of music, comparing it with other arts: painting (Ernst, Renoir, Schiele, Vermeer, etc..), literature (Balzac, Block, Maeterlinck, Mann, Ostrovsky, Proust, Racine, Rostand, etc..), cinema (Alexandrov, Chaplin, Cocteau, Kurosawa, Pasolini, etc..). Notes taken during or after these extremely interesting conversations Borisov has later converted into a book, thanks to which we can look into the inner world of Sviatoslav Richter, one of the most exciting figures on 20th century musical horizon.

ABOUT SVIATOSLAV RICHTER (1915-1997)

- The Italian critic Piero Rattalino has asserted that the only pianists comparable to Richter in the history of piano performance were Franz Liszt and Ferruccio Busoni.

- Glenn Gould called Richter one of "the most powerful musical communicators of our time".

- Van Cliburn attended a Richter recital in 1958 in the Soviet Union. He reportedly cried during the recital and, upon returning to the United States, described Richter's playing as "the most powerful piano playing I have ever heard".

- Arthur Rubinstein described his first exposure to Richter as follows: "It really wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist: tears began rolling down my cheeks."

- Heinrich Neuhaus described Richter as follows: "His singular ability to grasp the whole and at the same time miss none of the smallest details of a composition suggests a comparison with an eagle who from his great height can see as far as the horizon and yet single out the tiniest detail of the landscape."

- Dmitri Shostakovich wrote of Richter: "Richter is an extraordinary phenomenon. The enormity of his talent staggers and enraptures. All the phenomena of musical art are accessible to him."

- Vladimir Horowitz said: "Of the Russian pianists, I like only one, Richter"

- Pierre Boulez wrote of Richter: "His personality was greater than the possibilities offered to him by the piano, broader than the very concept of complete mastery of the instrument."

- Gramophone critic Bryce Morrison described Richter as follows: "Idiosyncratic, plain-speaking, heroic, reserved, lyrical, virtuosic and perhaps above all, profoundly enigmatic, Sviatoslav Richter remains one of the greatest recreative artists of all time."

La bustina di Minerva, 2001

Rights sold: Russia - Symposium, Corpus