Zoltán Kocsis

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Zoltán Kocsis

Zoltán Kocsis [ ˈzoltaːn ˈkoʧiʃ ] (born May 30, 1952 in Budapest ; † November 6, 2016 there ) was a Hungarian pianist , composer and conductor .

Life

childhood and education

Zoltán Kocsis grew up in Budapest as the only child of the married couple Mária and Ottó Kocsis. He was interested in his parents' piano from an early age and began his musical training at the age of five. In retrospect, Kocsis described his childhood as that of a happy street kid and attributed his lifelong love for soccer, swimming in the lake, chopping wood and barbecuing to it.

In 1963 Kocsis began studying piano and composition at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest. From 1968 he was a student at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in the class of Pál Kadosa , his assistants György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados . In 1973 he completed his training after successfully completing his graduate studies.

Career

Kocsis as a pianist

Zoltán Kocsis (1971)

As a student, Kocsis won the Hungarian Radio Beethoven Competition in 1970 and became famous. On the occasion of a concert in 1971 at Esterházy Palace , an English music critic commented on Kocsis' interpretation of Bartók's piano sonata that he had never heard it so vividly and colorfully. In 1971 Kocsis made his debut in the United States, and in 1972 he gave concerts for the first time in London in the Goldsmiths' Hall and at the Salzburg Festival with works by Bach , Beethoven and Schumann . At the age of 21, Kocsis recorded the first sound carriers for Hungaroton .

In 1975, Kocsis received an invitation from Svyatoslaw Richter to the French festival Fêtes musicales en Touraine , where he stepped in for the sick Maurizio Pollini at the last minute - in overalls and worn shoes . Richter became Kocsis' mentor and called him “one of the greatest pianistic talents of our time”. In the following years the two performed piano works for four hands. In 1977 Kocsis made his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Claudio Abbado in the Royal Albert Hall as a soloist in Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto . In the same year he gave his first concert at the Proms with Liszt's 1st Piano Concerto and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Alexander Gibson and appeared in the Roundhouse with contemporary works.

In just a few years, Kocsis had established himself on the international concert stage, and “orchestras of high standing tore themselves to engage the young Hungarians as soloists”. He stepped a. a. with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , the Dresden Staatskapelle , the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra , the New York Philharmonic , the London Philharmonia Orchestra , the Vienna Philharmonic , the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and the Berlin Philharmonic .

Contemporary music, teaching and composition

Since the beginning of his career, Kocsis has dosed international concert appearances and tours and, according to his interests, spent most of the year in Budapest. He dealt with new music , performed as an improviser and interpreter in an ensemble for experimental music, taught, wrote music reviews, regularly published musicological articles in the Hungarian Quarterly , wrote “in magazines on current musical issues” and composed.

In 1970, together with Péter Eötvös , Zoltán Jeney , László Vidovszky , László Sáry and others, Kocsis founded “the Studio for New Music in Budapest - an important laboratory for the avant-garde”, for composers and performing musicians “in the communist Eastern Bloc”. In addition to their own compositions, the group published contemporary works from East and West. Kocsis was particularly committed to the music of John Cage , Morton Feldman , Philip Glass , Arnold Schönberg and György Kurtág.

From 1973 to the late 1970s, Kocsis taught at the Liszt Academy, initially together with Dezső Ránki as Kadosa's assistant. András Schiff is one of Kocsis' early students .

Kocsis composed himself, his works include a. a. the Hommage à Kurtág and December 33 for chamber music ensembles, The Last But One Encounter for piano and harpsichord and Csernobil 86 for symphony orchestra. He also wrote cadenzas for Mozart's piano concertos , transcribed works by Wagner for piano, arranged Rachmaninov's Vocalise op.34 , orchestrated the fugue and toccata from Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin , Debussy's Ariettes oubliées and the 3rd act of the operatic fragment Moses and Aron von Schönberg besides other work.

Kocsis as orchestra founder and conductor

In 1983 he founded together with Iván Fischer , the Festival Orchestra Budapest , it led team directorship with fishing to a recognized orchestras and was more than a decade the solo pianist.

In 1997, Kocsis took over the traditional Hungarian State Orchestra as music director, which today operates under the name of the Hungarian National Philharmonic . Dissatisfied with the quality of the musicians, he changed the composition and in a few years established it alongside the FOB as Hungary's most respected orchestra. In the first season he presented Schönberg's Gurre-Lieder to the audience . In the years that followed, he performed works by Hungarian composers in addition to the classical orchestral repertoire. a. by Ernst von Dohnányi and Emil Petrovics . Other rarities such as the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss , Hector Berlioz ' Les nuits d'été , Gesang der Parzen by Johannes Brahms and the Symphony di tre re by Arthur Honegger were part of the orchestral programs.

After a hospital stay of several weeks in 2012 and still poor health, Kocsis gave concerts with the Hungarian National Orchestra until October 2016. In June 2016 he opened the Budapesti Nyári Fesztivál for the last time with the soloist Yuja Wang , whom Kocsis describes as her idol.

Sound carrier and rating

Kocsis presented an extensive discography, including a. he recorded all of Béla Bartók's piano works and Sergei Rachmaninov's piano concertos for Philips Records , after recording a complete recording of the piano concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach and works by Joseph Haydn for Hungaroton .

According to László Gyimesi, Svyatoslaw Richter judged Kocsis' recording of Bartók's Second Piano Concerto in 1977: "Zoltán's recording [...] is the best there is."

In 1985 Fono Forum called a Claude Debussy recording by Kocsis' from September 1983 "one of the most beautiful [...] in recent years", and in 1990 he received the Gramophone Classical Music Award for Debussys Images . In 2013 he received this award again together with the violinist Barnabás Kelemen for the recording of Bartók's two sonatas for violin and piano in the chamber music category .

The double CD Volume 59: Zoltán Kocsis - published in 1998 in the Philips edition The Great Pianists of the 20th Century - received outstanding reviews from music critics. Rondo described Kocsis as a "natural event!". He embodies “the most vital break in playfulness” of this edition. Kocsis is "the artist who is carried away with everything he touches". This is due to the fact that “at the moment he is always almost childishly enthusiastic”, “regardless of whether he sings Grieg's lyrical pieces, rumbles through Bartók's Romanian folk songs or takes us to an 'Isle joyeuse' (Debussy)”.

In 2016, Jan Brachmann praised Kocsis '“insight, his decisiveness, his ability” and named Kocsis' recording of Beethoven's Sonata in F minor op. 2 no external rush “Let music come to life. Kocsis "was incredibly changeable", noted Matthias Kornemann in an obituary, he "had pianistic resources at his disposal, the full extent of which perhaps only his colleagues could appreciate".

Appreciations

Since the 1970s, Kocsis has shaped "not only as a pianist, [...] as a conductor and composer the musical life in Hungary", but also as a teacher, musicologist, record producer and music critic. He was twice the recipient of the Kossuth Prize - 1978 and 2005 -, the highest state award in Hungary in the field of art and culture. In 2006 Kocsis received the Bartók Pásztory Prize from the Liszt Academy in Budapest. In 2007, the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture named him Ambassador of Hungarian Culture , and in 2012 Kocsis was awarded the Hungarian Corvin chain for outstanding cultural achievements.

In 2004, Kocsis received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marché international de l'édition musicale in Cannes and in the same year was honored with the order Le Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture .

Kocsis was married to the Hungarian pianist Adrienne Hauser for the first time. The pianist Krisztián Kocsis is his son from his second marriage to the Hungarian pianist Erika Tóth. He died on November 6, 2016 in Budapest.

In his obituary for Kocsis, the pianist László Gyimesi writes : “The media have given due recognition to this unique and exceptional talent - who has left an immeasurably valuable legacy not only for Hungary but for the whole world. I am sincerely convinced that Zoltán Kocsis is the most important, versatile musician of the second half of the 20th century. "

literature

Films (selection)

Web links

Commons : Zoltán Kocsis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Zoltan Kocsis, brilliant Hungarian pianist and conductor - obituary. In: The Telegraph . December 5, 2016 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c Zoltán Kocsis, pianist, conductor and composer, has died. In: Gramophone . November 7, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016 .
  3. ^ Zoltan Kocsis, brilliant Hungarian pianist and conductor - obituary. In: The Telegraph . December 5, 2016, quote: […] gave a more strongly characterized and colored account of Bartok's Sonata than I have ever heard from anyone (English).
  4. ↑ a b Barry Millington: Zoltán Kocsis obituary. In: The Guardian . November 11, 2016, accessed November 29, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Beate Bartlewski: Long night about Swjatoslaw Richter. “He always played like the first and last time”. Deutschlandfunk Kultur , March 21, 2015, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  6. ^ A b c Peter Cossé: The pride of Hungarian piano. In: Fono Forum . September 1977, p. 841.
  7. ↑ a b Jan Brachmann: Lord of two thinking hands. On the death of the Hungarian pianist, composer and conductor Zoltán Kocsis. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 8, 2016, p. 14.
  8. ^ Zoltán Kocsis, pianist and 'giant of music', dies aged 64. In: The Guardian . November 6, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016 .
  9. ^ Ingo Harden , Gregor Willmes: Pianist Profiles. 600 performers: their biography, their style, their recordings. Bärenreiter 2008, p. 387.
  10. ^ Marco Frei: conductor Zoltán Kocsis has died. Squaring the circle. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 7, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016 .
  11. ^ Zoltán Kocsis (1952–2016). Franz Liszt Music Academy , November 10, 2016, accessed on November 28, 2018 (English).
  12. ^ Stephen Greenbank: Wagner Transcriptions. Liszt - Kocsis. Musicweb International, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Falk Häfner: Iván Fischer on the death of Zoltán Kocsis: "He was a hero for Hungary's musical life". BR-Klassik , November 7, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016 .
  14. ^ Daniel E. Slotnik: Zoltan Kocsis, Pianist and Conductor, Dies at 64. In: The New York Times . November 9, 2016, accessed November 29, 2018 .
  15. ^ Gyöngyi Kálmán: Waiting for the Fifth Dimension. In: Magyar Nemzet . Hungarian National Philharmonic, May 2, 2003, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  16. ^ Angus McPherson: Zoltán Kocsis has died. In: Limelight. Australian's classical music and arts magazine. November 6, 2016, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Nemzeti Filharmonikusok és Yuja Wang - nyitókoncert 2016 (interjúk, werk). In: YouTube . Budapesti Nyári Fesztivál, January 21, 2017, accessed June 21, 2016 .YouTube
  18. ↑ László Gyimesi: Nem hasonlítható seitzihez - In memoriam: Kocsis Zoltán. January 2, 2017, Retrieved February 2, 2019 (Hungarian).
  19. ↑ Martin Meyer: The record of the month. In: Fono Forum. July 1985, p. 64.
  20. ↑ Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2013. In: Gramophone. Retrieved November 28, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Matthias Kornemann: Great Pianists of the 20th Century (Vol. 31-40). In: Rondo . February 1, 1999, accessed November 28, 2018 .
  22. ^ Matthias Kornemann: Virtuoso Magician. On the death of Zoltán Kocsis. In: Fono Forum. January 2017, p. 29.
  23. ↑ Marco Frei: Squaring the circle. On the death of the pianist and conductor Zoltán Kocsis. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. November 8, 2016, p. 37.
  24. ↑ Guillaume Tion: Zoltán Kocsis ne jouera plus Bartók. In: Liberation . November 7, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016 (French).
  25. ^ Zoltán Kocsis. Filharmonia Hungary Concert and Festival Agency, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  26. ↑ László Gyimesi: Nem hasonlítható seitzihez - In memoriam: Kocsis Zoltán. January 2, 2017, Retrieved February 2, 2019 (Hungarian).
personal data
SURNAME Kocsis, Zoltan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian pianist and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 2016
Place of death Budapest