Classical music
Nikita Magaloff
A Russian-born pianist who became a Swiss citizen, Nikita Magaloff (1912-1992) was one of the great Chopin interpreters of the 20th century, famous for his complete Chopin cycles. Long settled on the shores of Lake Geneva and close to the violinist Joseph Szigeti, whose daughter he married, he rests in the Clarens cemetery.
Nikita Magaloff: the Chopin of an exiled Georgian prince
From Saint Petersburg to Paris
Nikita Magaloff was born in 1912 in Saint Petersburg, into a family of the Georgian nobility, the Maghalashvili. The revolution drove his family out: in 1918 they left Russia for Finland, then Paris in 1922.
At the Paris Conservatoire he studied in the class of Isidore Philipp. On graduating in 1929, Ravel hailed a “truly extraordinary musician”.
Chopin, a whole life
Magaloff tied his name to Chopin as few pianists have. He played the complete piano works in series of six recitals, and became the first to record them all.
This lifelong companionship made him a reference point: where other pianists approach Chopin in fragments, he offered the complete landscape, shaped by decades of intimacy with the music.
The Riviera, and the Clarens cemetery
In 1940, Magaloff married Irene, the daughter of the violinist Joseph Szigeti. The marriage settled him lastingly on the shores of Lake Geneva, where his wife’s family lived. He would become a Swiss citizen.
He died in Vevey in 1992 and rests in the Clarens cemetery, not far from Joseph Szigeti, who had died twenty years earlier. The pianist and the violinist, son-in-law and father-in-law, keep watch side by side above Montreux.
Related places
▸Cimetière de ClarensCemeteryOpen the place →
Photo coming soonThe peaceful cemetery above Clarens where David Richards, the producer of Mountain Studios, rests.