Decca publishes on 26 CDs the complete Philips recordings made as a pianist by the Hungarian Zoltán Kocsis (1952-2016) between 1980 and 1999. Unlike the overwhelming majority of compilations of this type, more or less equal, this set is a constant intellectual and sensory stimulation.
When Zoltán Kocsis embarks on the Waltzes of Chopin, when he tackles the 2and Concerto of Rachmaninoff, the 3and by Bartok or Delphes’ Dancersfirst of Preludes of Debussy, a singular impression of urgency catches the ear.
Is it a device of musical rhetoric intended to capture the listener’s attention? Would this be an artifice, when, in fact, Zoltán Kocsis plunges us into fascinating and organic universes that convince us of the legitimacy of his words, even if they shake up our habits?
visionary strength
To listen to Zoltán Kocsis again in 2022, approaching works parsimoniously chosen between 1980 and 2000, is to realize that, even if we had collectively understood the eminence of his interpretative contribution, we had not really grasped it at the time. the scope.
The question does not arise for Béla Bartók’s work for solo piano, of which Kocsis recorded the entirety between 1991 and 1998. The hegemony of these eight discs on the discography has never been in doubt. After all, it’s intellectually comfortable: a Hungarian in Hungarian music, that’s quite logical. It’s just if we weren’t a little reluctant to do our Piano concertos recorded with Iván Fischer the reference. the 3and Concerto approached with such frank rhythmic drawings and a sustained tempo, where until now we tolerated the rose water direction of Pierre Boulez, accompanist of Daniel Barenboim and Hélène Grimaud 34 years apart, shocked still a little.
When the world knew Zoltán Kocsis, it was the mid-1970s. The era of LPs saw the emergence of a trio of young piano musketeers from Hungary whom the Hungaroton label was responsible for making known: András Schiff (born in 1953 ), Zoltán Kocsis (1952) and Dezso Ránki (1951). Their disc of Concertos for two and three pianos by Mozart (Schiff was the third pianist at the time!) with the Hungarian State Orchestra and János Ferencsik, released in 1973, has remained famous.
Ránki, in Schubert, and Kocsis, in Bartók, had even had, in 1975, the honors of a Denon LP, at the time the “nec plus ultra” experimenting with digital recording technology.
When the world lost Zoltán Kocsis, who died at the age of 64, in 2016, he said farewell above all to the leader of the Hungarian National Orchestra. Kocsis’ main activity had become conducting. But it was an impressive protean talent that music was losing: a remarkable conductor, a fabulous pianist, but also a visionary force in music, an orchestrator fascinated by French music — he brilliantly orchestrated melodies and works for piano of Debussy and Ravel — and a composer who, for example, immersed himself body and soul in the music, the libretto and the sketches of Schoenberg to complete the 3and act of the inextricable opera Moses and Aaron.
Preventer from turning in circles
At this stage and to this degree, we must indeed speak of genius and note that this genius has been variously and partially documented. A purely pianistic and Hungarian period, the beginning of a career behind the iron curtain, but in the Hungarian style, that is to say with a fairly easy European expansion, covers the period 1972-1982. It is documented on disc by Hungaroton, which harnesses Zoltán Kocsis to the renewal of the Bartokian piano catalog and employs the Kocsis-Ránki duo.
Zoltán Kocsis makes his debut at Philips with two discs: the Lyrical pieces by Grieg, recorded in April 1981, and transcriptions by Wagner (1980). The Wagner disc, which contains Kocsis’ transcriptions of the preludes to Act I of Tristan and Isolda and Mastersingers is sublime. It will not be a great commercial success and, for a very long time, it will only be found on CD in Japan. The Grieg disc raises an interesting issue, addressed by Jed Distler in his excellent manual. At the turn of the 1980s, there was not this plethora of recordings and the Lyrical pieces de Grieg are embodied by a recording: Emil Guilels at DG. But here is Zoltán Kocsis playing lone traveler, op. 43 noh 2, in 1 minute 32 seconds rather than 2 minutes 17 seconds. His approach leads to doubt. And he’s right !
Even if Guilels’ interpretation is very beautiful, Grieg did not write a vaporous meditation, but an “allegretto semplice” at 116 in the eighth note. Same for the phrasing of theArietta of the’Op.12, revived under the fingers of the Hungarian. Healthy competition, certainly, but which annoys some, because Philips and Deutsche Grammophon, the publisher of the Guilels record, are part of the same group. Four minutes of music (reissued here for the first time on CD) and all Kocsis is there. Quite a serious problem too.
There is thus in this box a disc of the Concertos nbone 11, 17 and 19 by Mozart, played and conducted by Zoltán Kocsis in 1996 and 1997. Just listen Final from Concerto noh 17 to rejoice in front of such spontaneity and remain flabbergasted by the fact that this CD had no tomorrow. And then we rationalize. Mozart at Philips is Alfred Brendel, a patiently built reputation. And that is quite the opposite of what we mean here. Brendel calculates everything, intellectualizes everything. Kocsis is the Mozart of Miloš Forman.
come back to life
Rebelote, exactly, in Beethoven: a disc of sonatas (notbone 1, 5, 8, 17) engraved in 1990, dazzling, where Kocsis reconnects with the Beethovenian style of the young Friedrich Gulda. We will never hear Kocsis in Beethoven again. And for good reason… At the time the CD was released, Philips was planning its second complete Brendel (1992-1996). The wise Alfred will enter the studio in November 1992. The on-demand listening tools will allow everyone to compare the final Prestissimo of the 1D Sonata. Thirty years later, one of the two almost looks like a gag.
Zoltán Kocsis’ art is brilliant, vigorous, robust, down to earth. He is also reasoned. Debussy, impressionist? He leaves that to others (Claudio Arrau, fascinating in the genre). But with Kocsis, if you follow the score, you go from dazzling to dazzling.
The German critic Peter Cossé writes in his notice of the Kocsis volume of Great pianists of the XXand century “He explores the scores thoroughly, while trying to put himself in the shoes of the author, in order to reproduce on the piano the process and the evolution of the multiplicity of timbres, of the diversity of polyphonic writing, without that the works lose an iota of what represents their importance and their force. Thus the Debussy recordings are breathtakingly clear. We are surprised by the splendor of the colors, making the synthesis of a distancing of good quality and a well measured impulsiveness. All this is only the logical consequence of a critical dismantling of the texture, then recomposed in an imaginary world where this composer of the past seems to stand shoulder to shoulder with his interpreter, coming back to life through him. »
Come back to life. The life breathed into the music by Zoltán Kocsis bursts into the Waltzes of Chopin and in the Concertos of Rachmaninoff and illuminates the polyphony of The art of running away by Bach — again a forgotten recording, quite wrongly.
Zoltán Kocsis participated with Iván Fischer in 1983 in the creation of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Their paths then separated. Kocsis was appointed musical director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997. But Philips will never document this conductor’s career. It is Hungaroton who will take care of it in the last 15 years, far too timidly and reducing himself to Bartók.
After Philips, the pianist’s career was eclipsed and ignored by publishers, even though Kocsis presented in concert essential programs like the association of theOpus 111 of Beethoven and the Sonata D.960 by Schubert. A video shot in Switzerland in 1998, long gone, once testified to this. We deserved so much more.