Nikita Magaloff (February 21, 1912 – December 26, 1992) was a Georgian-Russian pianist.
He 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 recorded the complete 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 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’.