Two pianists (Zoltán Kocsis), 2022

This Week in Classical Music: May 30, 2022.  Two Pianists.  Zoltán Kocsis and Marth Argerich were born this week: Kocsis in Budapest, Hungary, on May 30^th of 1952, Argerich in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 5^th of 1941.  Argerich is famous and widely considered one of the greatest pianists of her generation.  She doesn’t need any introductions, especially considering that we’ve written about her on many occasions (for example, here).  And, at the age of 81, she actively performs, often introducing new repertoire.  Kocsis, on the other hand, as talented as he was, isn’t that well known, which is a pity.  Kocsis studied at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest (György Kurtág was one of his teachers).  At the age of 18 he caused a sensation, winning the Hungarian Radio Beethoven Competition.  He was recognized as one of the outstanding musicians and at the age of 21 was awarded the Ferenc Liszt Prize, the highest musical award in Hungary.  He soon developed an international career, touring the US in 1971 and playing in London and Salzburg a year later.  His repertory was broad, from Bach (one of his favorites – he recorded all of Bach’s concertos) to Bartok and on to his contemporaries (he made several premier performances of his teacher, Kurtág).  Kocsis was also a composer and worked with the avant-garde group the New Studio.  Kocsis had a life-saving heart surgery in 2012; the surgery prolonged his life by four years.  He died of heart decease in 2016.

We’ll present two very different samples of Kocsis’s art: first, recorded in December of 1984, his wonderful interpretation of Bela Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 3 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer conducting (here).  And 30 years later, in 2014, Kocsis conducted and played Bach’s Bach Keyboard Concerto no. 5, BWV 1056 (here).

A note: next two weeks we’ll be traveling, so our entries will be (mercifully) short.