Jay Nordlinger is a senior fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributing writer at The Next Move.
For Alexander Malofeev, the Russian pianist, age 24, I have a possibly strange question: “Do you feel young?” We older people consider him young, of course, but I know this: when I was 24, I did not feel young.
So, does he? His answer is yes and no.
No, because he has been concertizing since he was about 11. You start to think in terms of music seasons, he says, not in terms of calendar years. He has been working for about 15 years now. You might even call him a veteran.
But at the end of 2022, he left Russia—which gave him a new lease on life, or a different kind of life. He now lives in Berlin. He feels a new freedom, a wider latitude. So, in a sense, he is just a few years old.
The question “Do you feel young?” is not a straightforward one for Sasha Malofeev. (“Sasha” is the common nickname for “Alexander,” and that is what Malofeev goes by.)
I have sat down with him at the Salzburg Festival, in Austria, where he is playing a recital and I am doing some journalistic work. To hear our interview—our podcast—go here.
Malofeev was born in Moscow on October 21, 2001. (For an American like me, that means about a month after 9/11.) There was a piano at home—an upright. A piano is standard equipment in Russian homes, certainly in Muscovite ones.
“My grandpa studied music,” says Malofeev. “My grandma studied music. My dad studied music. None of them can play. But we had this piece of furniture, and when I was five, we unwrapped it, so that I could try it out.”
He was good at it.
Sasha was educated at the leading musical institutions in Moscow: the Gnessin School, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. When he was 13, he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians. The age limit for that competition is 17.
In brief, Malofeev has played everywhere, and with everyone, meaning the premier orchestras and conductors. He has a contract with Sony Classical. He’s on top of the musical, or at least the pianistic, heap.
A question for him: “Did you choose this?” He answers that no one chooses anything at five years old. He was given a regimen, and he accepted it. “You wake up. You go to the piano.” There was never any choice—until he moved out of Russia when he was 21. That was his choice.
I tell him, “I want to use the expression ‘declaration of independence.’” He laughs and says, “Yeah, maybe.”
Another question, offbeat: Does he feel that he can be goofy, serious artist though he is? The rest of us can be goofy, especially when we’re young. It’s normal and expected.
There is no goofing off in the Russian musical system, says Malofeev. It’s work and sacrifice. It’s well-nigh military. “I had very limited social experience and very few chances to be goofy, or to get to know what that is.” Now he is “trying to find more balance.”
I have skipped too far ahead in our story, or rather his story.
In February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the West, some presenting organizations canceled appearances by Russian musicians. These musicians included hard-core Putinists. They also included at least one innocent bystander: 20-year-old Sasha Malofeev.
On March 2, he made a statement, on Facebook: “The truth is that every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence or predict.”
Five days later, he made another statement: “Honestly, the only thing I can do now is pray and cry.” He was reluctant to say anything—anything further—that might affect his family in Russia. (That tells you something about the Russian government, doesn’t it?)
Winding up, he said, “I do understand that my problems are very insignificant compared to those of people in Ukraine, including my relatives who live there.”
I commented, “What a mensch, that young man.” I made that comment in an essay that says all I know to say on the question of cancellations, boycotts, and the like: “When Politics Invades Art.”
Malofeev may be out of Russia, but Russian he is. The Russian language is “the air I breathe,” he says. So is Russian music. And the two are related, he says: the language and the music.
If Malofeev has a hero, or model, it’s Rachmaninoff—who, I might add, left Russia in 1917, about a month after the revolution, and died in Beverly Hills in 1943.
Malofeev and I spend some time on Vladimir Horowitz, another pianist who idolized Rachmaninoff (as any sensible pianist, or person, would). Horowitz left Russia in 1925—a bit late—and died in New York in 1989.
Horowitz came from the “Russian school,” for sure—exemplified it—but he also absorbed influences from all over the world, in a high-flying international career.
Life experiences find their way into musicianship, says Malofeev. He notes that most of the people in his audiences are much older than he (obviously). They bring a wealth of experience to their listening to music. And what does he, the pianist, bring?
“I’ve spent my whole life practicing in a room and basically stewing in my own juice.”
To this, I have two reactions. (1) How in the world did this young Russian learn the expression “to stew in one’s own juice”? He grins. He likes English, and he’s adept in it. (2) He has experienced, emotionally, maybe more than he knows.
These days, he feels free to explore repertoire off the beaten path. He is playing Medtner (a composer whom Horowitz also prized). He is playing Mieczysław Weinberg, a Polish-born Jew who went to the Soviet Union in 1939 (five days after Germany invaded Poland). He is playing Arthur-Vincent Lourié, who has an amazing story.
This man, né Naum Izrailevich Lurya, was born in Russia in 1892, and he died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1966, having many adventures and misadventures in between. He worked for the Voice of America.
In his Salzburg recital, Malofeev plays some Lourié pieces. And some Sibelius pieces, essentially unknown. And, at the end, a very well-known piece: Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in B-flat minor.
My article today is not one for music criticism, but I can tell you that Malofeev’s playing of the sonata deserves the highest possible praise, namely the adjective “Rachmaninoff-like.”
Earlier this year, Sony Classical released an album by Malofeev called Forgotten Melodies. That is also the title of a set of piano pieces by Medtner. The composers represented on the album are, in chronological order: Glinka, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, and Medtner. All four of them were born in Russia, and all four of them died in exile (in Berlin, Paris, Beverly Hills, and London, respectively).
Talking with Sasha, I tick off the Russian- or Soviet-born pianists I can think of who live in the West: Grigory Sokolov, Evgeny Kissin, Arcadi Volodos, Yefim Bronfman, Igor Levit, Daniil Trifonov—and now Malofeev. There are others.
Rachmaninoff was 69 when he died, and Malofeev will be that age in 2070. What will Russia be then? No one can know, but we can all hope for the best.
A very pleasant account of Malofeev. I clicked on the link to "Forgotten Melodies" and chose to listen to a brief (3+ min.) track by Malofeev himself, entitled, "Danza graziosa," part of the title suite for the album. I was struck by the resonance with American ragtime, particularly with the ragtime revival work of William Bolcom. Quite a surprise. Looking forward to further surprises as I download more tracks.