Review of the recital in the Musikverein (21.02.2024)

🔷 Die Presse / Sensationell: Ausnahmepianist Alexander Malofeev begeistert bei seinem Wiener Solodebüt.

The 22-year-old Russian is no longer an insider tip. Nevertheless, no one could predict that he would enthral people in this way in the Musikverein. Even with just one arm.

Just 22 years old, and already able to elicit an admiring «Remarkable!» from Daniel Barenboim with his playing as a teenager, Alexander Malofeev is not actually an insider tip anymore. It should also have come as no surprise that the exceptional Moscow pianist, who sits at the piano like a six-footer in an Isetta, offered a fabulous performance at his debut as a soloist in Vienna. But that good?

His performance in the Brahms Hall consisted of a Baroque half and a Russian Romantic half. The latter kicked off with Alexander Scriabin’s Prélude and Nocturne op. 9 – a work for the left hand, written by Scriabin for himself, either because the wild composer really did have tendonitis, or because he wanted to show off. And yet: the piece is not boastful but rather dreamy. It is impressive, though, in how it makes use of the entire keyboard, despite that being controlled with just one hand.

Malofeev is also not a show-off, and, although brilliant and technically equipped with everything you could wish for, he is not even a virtuoso, in the true sense, who launches into a big fireworks show. Rather, it is a wonderful mixture of dark grey and blue-black, in which Scriabin, and also Rachmaninoff (two «Moments musicaux», a transcribed song and the second sonata) shone. With full-footed impacts, but never brutal, and without becoming sugary sweet, even in the sonata, despite daring slowness.

Storms of jubilation before, after and between the four encores.
And then, the calm, unsentimental way in which Malofeev played the Handel! In the variation movement of that, an energy was built up that then bubbled directly into the Minuet, the subsequent Purcell and the Muffat. The first part thus gave the appearance of a large suite.

The blond acknowledged the break of storming applause with a joyfully mischievous smile before continuing with Bach. All the excess of high-romantic transcription (from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto via Bach’s Concerto for Solo Organ to Samuel Feinberg’s piano version), from thunderous to subtle, whether a church-bell-like crescendo or whispering, was expansively exhausted. Storms of jubilation and standing ovations before, between and after the four encores, amongst which Pletnev’s arrangements from the Nutcracker thrilled.

By Jens F. Laurson, 22 February 2024