– Nikita Magaloff In Recital – Frick Collection Concerts – July 6, 1986 – WNYC-New York –
The legendary Russian-born Pianist Nikita Magaloff in recital this week. Recorded in concert during the Frick Collection series, Magaloff is featured in a recital of music by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky and Chopin – broadcast on July 6, 1986.
Here’s what’s on the player:
Part 1:
1. Scarlatti: 3 Sonatas
2. Beethoven: Sonata in E-major op. 109
3. Debussy: Images – series 2
4. Stravinsky: 4 Studies from Opus 7
Part 2:
1. Chopin: 24 Preludes from Opus 28 + encores
Magaloff had a long career and played many premiers during that time. He played with all the major symphony orchestras of the world under some of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. It was said that, as he got older, his playing become more impassioned and charged with a sense of great elegance. This concert, recorded some 6 years before his death, bears that out very well.
Nikita Magaloff was best known for his espousal of the music of Chopin and was accustomed to perform the complete piano works in series of six recitals. He was the first to record Chopin’s complete works. While these recordings have been criticized for their failure to plumb the depths of Chopin’s works, they were innovative for their textual fidelity and unsentimentality. Magaloff, for example, preferred and recorded Chopin’s own manuscript versions of the waltzes rather than the familiar versions published posthumously by Julian Fontana.[citation needed] In 1949 he took over his friend and colleague Dinu Lipatti’s master class at the Geneva Conservatory after Lipatti became too ill to teach (Lipatti died the following year at age 33). Magaloff continued regular teaching until 1960, when the demands of his concert career took priority, and he toured in the United States, South America, Japan, Israel, South Africa, and throughout Europe including Russia and Scandinavia. He still gave occasional master-classes, and took part in juries at international piano competitions. In 1982 and 1987 he served on the jury of the Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition.
Among his many pupils were the pianists Martha Argerich, Maria Tipo, Ingrid Haebler and Valery Sigalevitch, and the organist Lionel Rogg.
Enjoy.
