Reviews of the concert at Barbican Centre (16.02.2024) / 3rd Prokofiev with Hannu Lintu and the BBC Symphony Orchestra
🔷 Bachtrack.com / Electrifying Prokofiev from Alexander Malofeev, Hannu Lintu and the BBCSO.
It was an electrifying performance of one of the greatest pieces in the concertante repertoire, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in C major. Add into the mix one of the most brilliant young soloists around, Alexander Malofeev, and the BBCSO on top form, and the result was thrilling. Malofeev combined a caressing lyricism, never exaggerated, with a glittering percussive accuracy. His awareness of the important orchestral partnerships throughout was impressive, so that while you couldn’t take you eyes off him, he was still ideally integrated into the whole ensemble. Mikhail Pletnev’s transcription of the Grand pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker was his magical encore…
By Chris Garlick, 17 February 2024
🔷 The Arts Desk / Malofeev, BBCSO, Lintu, Barbican review — finesse as well as fireworks.
This was a muesli programme: nutty, crunchy, just sweet enough, its success lying in the balance of the various ingredients. At times, such was the explosiveness of the playing, it felt like popping candy had been added to the muesli, but in a good way. The fireworks came in the brilliant John Adams finale, but also from the young Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev, whose playing blazed in the first half.
Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, written for the composer himself to play and begun when he was little older than Malofeev is now, is certainly young man’s music. Malofeev responded to its skittishness and whimsicality, turning on a sixpence from silky arpeggios to hammering chords. His muscular playing belies his fey appearance, almost impossibly blond and pale, sitting low at the piano, gentle in demeanour – till the action begins. But there was finesse as well as fireworks in the second movement, as he navigated the theme and variations’ emotional journey from naïve gavotte to earnest contemplation. In the finale it was back to blistering passagework and phenomenal double-octaves and, as if the concerto itself was a mere bagatelle, he gave us Mikhail Pletnev’s transcription of the pas de deux from the Nutcracker, Malofeev’s extraordinary facility not masking the subtlety with which the melody emerged from the middle of the texture.
By Bernard HughesSaturday, 17 February 2024