Notes from the 2025 Salzburg Festival ( 2 ) Alexander Malofeev and María Dueñas in Recital

Salzburg Festival • Recitals • Malofeev & Dueñas

Unlikely Duo at the Mozarteum

On paper, Alexander Malofeev and María Dueñas have only their age in common. In concert, though, the quiet, pale-blond Russian at the piano and the savvy Spanish violinist made for an unexpectedly effective musical pairing.

Kids at work: Malofeev is 23, Dueñas 22, and when Karol Szymanowski wrote his Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 9, the Polish composer was just 21. The three met , not for the first time, at the Salzburg Festival soloist recital in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum – and they delighted the audience. Dueñas, with her wild, expressive tone — a touch of viola-like smokiness, high intensity, and more than a hint of risk (or at least the impression of it) — threw herself irresistibly into her part, lips pursed, eyes shut tight. A bit of show? Surely. But who would begrudge her.

The lanky, long-limbed Malofeev, sitting at the Steinway like the Peanuts’ Schroeder, fingered a surprising amount of music from his score. One wanted to listen to him every bit as much as to her, as seemingly simple accompaniments were turned into impressionistic studies or sounded as if he were improvising them on the spot.

That the young man would impress was no surprise, after causing a stir at the Musikverein last February (“Critic’s Notebook: Alexander Malofeev gives his recital debut in Vienna”). He is surely one of the most exciting, promising pianists of his — already well-stocked with good pianists — generation. María Dueñas, on the other hand, had so far made her mark with a meticulously planned and marketed career, stoked by media hype and record contracts, helped by rich parents and dusted with pristine “vanilla cupcake” playing (“Wiener Symphoniker: 16er-Blech und die ‚Fünfte von Brahms‘“). Musical character, however, less so.

That this combination should succeed was by no means a given when the concert was booked — though a nearly identical program intermittently performed in New York’s Weill Recital Hall had raised hopes. In any case, this recital (like most in the “Soloists’ Concerts” series) is not an indigenous Festival event but at best an ornamental garnish, that pretty much anyone can garnish their musical with, assuming they knock at the right agency’s door. That’s neither good nor bad per se; it all depends on the combination. Any Wiener Schnitzel with potato salad benefits from a touch of parsley. But only parsley — musical commodity fare — makes for a dull plate. See Grafenegg.

After the youthfully-exuberant Szymanowski — already cheered frenetically by the (nearly as) youthful crowd on the balcony — things continued promisingly with Debussy’s swan song, his G minor Sonata, written just before the composer’s death. An earthy note came into play, here, not the cliché of ether, but variety and depth. In this work, as in the first two movements of the concluding, massive César Franck A-major Sonata, Dueñas impressed not only with the energy of her playing but also with her kaleidoscope of timbres: smoky, delicate, hefty by turns.

The third movement’s hectic episodes seemed a bit aimless, and in the finale Dueñas’s personal touch — the variety that had benefited the music so far — gave way to a clean, somewhat sharp and loud tone, as if she were intent on bringing the final stretch home without mishap. But this did not diminish the overall impression — and the vociferous audience refused to let the duo go until after a third encore, among them Piazzolla, and an arrangement of Richard Strauss’s “Morgen”, tenderly, almost hesitantly accompanied by Malofeev.

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