I Felt I Was Schoenberg’s Pupil. Judit Rácz Talks with Zoltán Kocsis
I Felt I Was Schoenberg’s Pupil. Judit Rácz Talks with Zoltán Kocsis

Summary/Abstract: Zoltán Kocsis has been chief conductor of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra since 1997. Alongside his stellar career as a pianist Kocsis has been devoting more and more of his time to the orchestra, mounting Hungarian premieres of rarely played and new works, including his own transcriptions for orchestra of pieces by Bartók, Debussy and Ravel. His commitment to contemporary music has been recognized by, among others, György Kurtág, who dedicated several of his compositions to him. Kocsis’s recording of Bartók’s Out of Doors was hailed by London-based Gramophone magazine as one of the greatest piano recordings of the twentieth century, and Philips included him in its series of the fifty greatest pianists. Kocsis’s latest feat, attracting critical and public acclaim, was his completion of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron, left in two acts by the composer. The semistaged premiere took place in the Palace of Arts on 16 January 2010 with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir under the baton of Kocsis, with Wolfgang Schöne and Daniel Brenna in the principal roles.

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