Nikita Magaloff

1965

Magaloff and Georg Solti (1965)

Nikita Magaloff (Russian: Никита Магалов) (21 February [O.S. 8 February] 1912 – 26 December 1992) was a Georgian-Russian pianist.

He was born in Saint Petersburg to a Georgian noble family named Maghalashvili. Magaloff and his family left Russia in 1918 for Finland and then Paris, where he studied with Isidor Philipp, chair of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory. He also numbered Ravel and Prokofiev among his friends there.

He was best known for his espousal of the music of Chopin, recording the complete piano works - the first time anyone had done so. While these recordings have been criticised 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.

His interpretations of Mendelssohn are also striking, finding a vein of melancholy that is often missed.

Magaloff's playing carried the hallmarks of Philipp's elegant, refined style, though he himself rejected the sentimental interpretations of Philipp's generation (he was especially critical of Paderewski whom he believed had "falsified Chopin"). He once described himself to the critic and writer Piero Rattalino as 'a vieux style pianist'.

His playing, however, underwent a change in his later years, becoming more passionate, daring and challenging. He remarked, in an interview with Eugenio Scalfari "at the age of seventy, I have come to the conclusion that only the sentiment and fear of death can induce an immoderate passion for life." His last recordings bear eloquent tribute to this 'immoderate passion for life'.

In 1949 he took over his friend and colleague Dinu Lipatti's master class at the Geneva Conservatory after Lipatti's early death, and continued teaching until 1960. Among his many pupils were the pianists Martha Argerich, Maria Tipo, Ingrid Haebler and Valery Sigalevitch, and the organist Lionel Rogg.

Nikita Magaloff was married to Irene, the daughter of the violinist Joseph Szigeti. He died in Vevey, Switzerland on 26 December 1992.

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Name	Magaloff, Nikita
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Date of birth	1912
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Date of death	1992
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