Review of the recital in Madrid (10.03.2025)
🔷 Scherzo / Alexander Malofeev, another prodigy of the Russian School.
The presentation in Madrid of the young Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev was quite an event. The word extraordinary doesn’t do him justice. Malofeev is in tune with the times, so to speak. I don’t know if he’s even turned twenty-four years old yet, yet he displays an artistic maturity that seems to extend to all repertoires. But there also seems to be a preference for the school of Russian composers who wrote for virtuosos from the great national school.
This was demonstrated by his rendition of the beautiful and, above all, intricate Sonata No. 3 by Kabalevsky, an unfamiliar composer in the West, one of the few (by the way) who was spared from the harsh repression of musicians in 1948. This work is, like the other two sonatas, full of minimum values and accelerations. It’s for highly skilled virtuosos, but it has its own dramaturgy, so to speak. It’s a situation defended by specific growth and detention, for fingers that aren’t magic, but a mixture of overwhelming work and natural ease. The type that always helps and is never quite enough.
A figure like Malofeev is precisely the result of such a mix. His extraordinary, overwhelming Kabalevsky came after a Schubert triptych (Three Piano Pieces D 946) played in a way that was unusual for us, in which the cantabile follows a concept that I could not define, but that is partially alien to us, between drama and philosophy, rather impure for being somewhat intrusive in the sequence. This Schubert, so original for us, and the extraordinary Kabalevsky rounded off a first part that raised expectations for the already superb programme, with Janáček, Liszt’s Harmonies, and Scriabin’s Preludes and Fantasie Op. 28 still left to enjoy.
Malofeev, for some reason, seamlessly paired Janáček’s series, In the Mists, four intimate and expressive pieces, with pieces from Liszt’s Funérailles, and about twelve minutes of that beautiful sequence that we rarely hear live, the Poetic and Religious Harmonies. The soloist had the lucidity of concept to avoid the late-romantic temptation that always threatens the few works that Janáček composed for solo piano; and the four pieces of In the Mists have more to do with French inspirations than with survivals alien to the prudish introspection that Malofeev was able to extract. And from there the soloist deduced the continuity of Liszt’s Funérailles , with twelve minutes unfolding in ten minimal pieces that make up a serious and also restrained whole, with no more exaltations than necessary (however subjective this may sound), with an extraordinary demand for the virtuoso, who again has to face minimal values, growths, and dramatic climaxes that test a soloist’s sense of proportion.
Scriabin is an indispensable asset for the Russian School, no matter how much Stravinsky is played, both for the continuity of the school of virtuosos and for the not always measured late-romantic exaltation. And always the race of minimum values for fingers, hands that seem to fly. The so-called ‘Russian Chopin’, above chauvinisms, carried out a synthesis of nineteenth-century pianism that would bear early fruit in the young Prokofiev. Between contemplation (limited) and outburst (well conducted), Malofeev’s Scriabin (Preludes Op. 22 and Fantasie Op. 28, turn-of-the-century works) could have been the grand finale of this amazing demonstration of a young, determined, inspired pianist with incredible training and a wealth of ideas. But there were four encores that impressed the audience to the point of turning what had been a huge success into a small apotheosis (small because of the room, not because of the phenomenon itself).
The devilish Prokofiev was there, as was Rachmaninoff, but thanks to the fact that they wrote it down, we can give a reference of those four encores that the virtuoso dedicated to a captivated audience: a Nocturne by Glinka, the Toccata Op. 11 by Prokofiev, a Canzona by Medtner and, finally, the Prelude Op. 3 No. 2 by Rachmaninoff, an early work that already shows a genius. Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev are examples of the type of Russian composer who composes for his own virtuosity, as Liszt did. This recital by the extraordinary Alexander Malofeev was just that, although it was much more, because those four names start from virtuosity to fly very high, as Malofeev did.
By Santiago Martín Bermúdez, 10.03.2025