Romantic fantasies

He is one of the youngest exponents of the illustrious Russian piano school: Alexander Malofeev, born in 2001. Malofeev is not only a technically gifted pianist, above all he is a musician who knows how to put profound expressiveness into his playing. In this recital, he plays imaginative romantic pieces by his countrymen Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, in addition to works by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms.

In 2014, as a thirteen-year-old, Malofeev, who publicly speaks out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians, held at the Moscow Conservatory. In that place, in the year 1900, Scriabin composed his Fantasy Op. 28, a turbulent and passionate work that already foreshadows his later style. Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke are a paragon of balance in comparison. They date from six months before Schubert’s death and the first edition was edited by Brahms. Brahms himself also wrote his Vier Klavierstücke towards the end of his life.