Alexander Malofeev is a twenty-five-year-old Russian pianist now resident in Berlin whose debut album for Sony entitled 'forgotten melodies' is of a mastery, a pianism and poetry extraordinary at any age. His programme, alive with Russian nostalgia, is gloriously enterprising; Glinka, Medtner and Glazunov as well as Rachmaninov, and throughout, the playing is of a colour , imaginative reach and naturalness rare in even the finest pianists. In Balakirev's florid transcription of Glinka's 'The Lark' Malofeev makes it difficult to imagine an equal warmth and poetic freedom. He is gentle and confiding in Glinka's Mazurka, taking its cue from Chopin's formidable fifty-eight examples of the genre, playful in the 'Polka,' magical and insinuating in the 'Waltz.'
His most substantial offering on CD 1 is Medtner's set of 'Forgotten Melodies'(Malofeev's title) where he takes all the time in the world to 'sing' of his delight and commitment to his all-Russian theme, to its alternation of brooding and volubility. I doubt whether Medtner has had a more persuasive or insinuating advocate. From others he may seem rambling and discursive, but not from Malofeev.
In Rachmaninov he gives us 'the' Prelude making his listeners listen afresh to the over- familiar, and in the B flat minor Sonata, played in the revised 1931 version--which omits too much of the original from 1913-- the playing is. once again, a dream. You seem to hear the Sonata anew with 'voicing at once subtle and bold, arresting at every level. And while I would never want to be without Van Cliburn's legendary Moscow performance, Malofeev, in a radically different way, holds you with every note; never more so than in final pages where his sudden turn of speed, his velocity is truly breathtaking.
The climax of the early 'Elegie' blazes as it were out of darkness and the selection from the Etudes-tableaux from opus 33, including the two extra ones Rachmaninov discarded is, again typical of Malofeev's enterprise.
Finally, Glazunov and, curiously, a setting other than Manuel de Falla's of 'Song of the Volga Boatmen' while in 'Valse' there is a natural empathy that makes you long to hear this pianist in the two Sonatas, Glazunov's major keyboard works.
Sony's sound is superb capturing all of Malofeev's immense dynamic range. In sixty or so years of reviewing I have seldom heard a more remarkable record debut.
Bryce Morrison