Ilya Safonov

Safonov is the pianist most people have never heard of who taught the pianists you have. Scriabin, Lhevinne, Medtner — they all came out of his studio at the Moscow Conservatoire. Almost nothing he composed is famous. Almost everything he taught is.

The recordings worth tracking down

Safonov died in 1918 and the surviving recordings of him are limited and patchy. The Welte-Mignon piano rolls from 1905-1908 are the most reliable record of his playing — when reproduced on a modern restored Welte, they're as close as you'll get to hearing him in a room. Various reissues exist. A Welte-Mignon historical roll CD is the entry point.

For Safonov-the-conductor, the Moscow Philharmonic recordings under his direction don't survive as recordings — he was a generation too early. The best modern proxy is the Vladimir Ashkenazy and Yevgeny Svetlanov readings of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, both of whom traced their interpretive line back to Safonov's school.

His students recorded everything

This is the easier route in. Josef Lhevinne and Alexander Scriabin both studied with Safonov, and their recordings are widely available. The Lhevinne complete recordings from the 1920s-30s show you the touch and pedal language Safonov taught — light, transparent, never percussive. About $40 for the set.

Scriabin's own performances (also on Welte rolls) of his Etudes and Sonatas are the other direct lineage. The Scriabin Plays Scriabin reissues are essential listening.

The score that matters

Safonov wrote one piano method that's still in print and still used: "New Formula for the Piano Teacher and Student" (1916). It's a thin book of finger and wrist exercises that looks unremarkable until you try them and realise every pianist who came out of his school had the same right-hand independence. Reprint copies are about $15.

Reading

There's no great English biography. The closest is the section on Safonov in Harold Schonberg's The Great Pianists, which is the standard reference for the entire 19th and 20th-century piano tradition and worth owning for itself. About $20 used.

For the wider context of Russian pianism, David Dubal's The Art of the Piano includes interviews with several of Safonov's grand-students. It's the best living account of the school he founded.

If you actually play

You don't need a fancy piano to work through Safonov's exercises. You need a piano with a real weighted action, which rules out the cheap digital keyboards. A Kawai ES120 is the entry point if you don't have a grand — around $800 and the action is honest. For a metronome, the Korg MA-2 at $20 does the job for the rest of your life.

Read Schonberg. Listen to Lhevinne. Work the exercises. That's how you actually understand Safonov, not by reading another biographical sketch.