Magyar Narancs: The Masters Collection: Zoltán Kocsis
It is quite an impossible challenge to evoke Zoltán Kocsis’ oeuvre in a three-CD edition. Not only because that oeuvre also embraces the composer’s own works, orchestrations, additions to other composers’ works, writings, teaching, but because even the part of these that are possible to present on CD, i.e. the oeuvre of the pianist and the conductor is itself so varied that it is simply impossible to provide a cross-section on 3 CDs.
That is why, holding the new album dedicated to Kocsis in Hungaroton’s highly significant cultural preservation series in their hand one should not be surprised not hearing a single note by Bach or Beethoven on any of the three CDs (even though Kocsis, a follower of Gould used to be the greatest player of Bach in his early career, and his competition success catapulting him to fame is associated to Beethoven). There should be no complaint either for not hearing a single note head by Rachmaninoff or for not including a solo piano piece by Debussy, only the Cello sonata.
We should be pleased to see the three CDs place the artist in context showing his inspiring relationships (Perényi, Berkes, Szenthelyi, Ránki, Schiff, Takács Quartet, Kelemen), his commitments (Bartók, Cage, Kurtág), his re-interpretative relations to classics (Haydn, Mozart, Schubert), and that the series’ editors selected in the anthology such rarities by Bartók as the Kossuth-symphony (a link to Richard Strauss, another character important for Kocsis) or the 1st violin concerto (pseudonamed the young artist’s), and that, as a ‘counterweight’ to these we find Contrasts, the Sonata and Divertimento for two pianos and percussion.
Kristóf Csengery
Source: Magyar Narancs