The 2022 Season of Musikàmera concludes with the recital of the young “Russian genius” Alexander Malofeev, who inaugurates a tour in Italy with this Venetian stop. Rising to prominence in 2014 with winning the First Prize at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians at the age of thirteen, he quickly became one of the most famous pianists of his generation. Malofeev will perform in a program that includes the opening performance of the famous Sonata “Moonlight” by Beethoven. Followed by Sonata No. 4, op.56 by a Soviet composer of Polish origin almost unknown in the West, Mojsej Samujlovic Vajnberg, a friend of Shostakovic, who helped him overcome the persecutions against the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia of the Stalinist regime. His Sonata begins with a jaunty theme which then shifts towards sad and even ghostly situations, in a classic four-movement structure that is interesting and pleasant to listen to. The Preludes and Impromptus by Skriabin, a Russian composer straddling late romanticism and twentieth-century experimentation, refer to Chopin and Liszt, but reveal the interesting creative vein of the musician, full of passion, intimism, dreamlike visions and spirituality. The Etudes-tableaux op. 33 by Rachmaninov are intended as “studies in images”: evocations in music of visual stimuli, although the author has never been specific about what inspired each piece; he preferred to leave these interpretations to the listener and the performer, suggesting that he “paint himself what he most suggests”. The pieces require from the pianist strength, precision, endurance, rhythmic control and dynamic and tonal balance.
