Zoltán Kocsis, that ‘giant of music’ (as Iván Fischer has called him), became Music Director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic in 1997, 14 years after he and Fischer had co-founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra. On the evidence of their recordings alone, you sense musical soul-mates facing the same direction, never shying away from either risks or interpretative danger. Of the two, Kocsis, tragically lost to us in November at the young age of 64, was perhaps more the maverick musician and this superbly executed Brahms D minor Concerto at times vies with the legendary 1962 live Gould/Bernstein reading for impact.

It is interesting that although at the time Bernstein famously made a great public kerfuffle about Gould’s slow tempos, when he came to record the work with Krystian Zimerman for DG in 1983 his tempo for the Adagio was actually slower than in New York by three minutes. True, Sándor Falvai and Kocsis are just a minute swifter than Zimerman and Bernstein in the first movement (although their finale pips Gould and Bernstein to the post by mere seconds), but as comparative tempos are only of the essence to a limited extent, it is better to relate the workings of a performance that is strongly stated, notably unsentimental, transparently drawn in terms of instrumental lines, pianistically forthright (though never insensitive) and with a feeling for symphonic scale that few rival performances can match. As with the two Bernstein-led recordings, having a pianist-composer on the rostrum seems to have added an extra dimension to the interpretation. Above all it breathes a dignified air: I love the strongly projected bass lines and the finale’s patiently imperious fugato.

This Brahms Concerto, then, extends our experience of a masterpiece, but Liszt’s Three Funeral Odes, products of the 1860s and therefore of the composer’s late middle-age, are revelatory. The first rises to a fiercely majestic central climax; the second takes its inspiration from a visit to Italy, though paradoxically it also recalls, at times, the world of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, whereas the third refers to the tone poem Tasso, not only in name but by its use of musical quotation. The performances are both elegiac and boldly defiant and my only regret is that we don’t have a recording of the principal Liszt tone poems from Kocsis. Perhaps Hungarian radio can oblige, or Fischer will set to work on a set, maybe as a memorial to his late friend. The present box comes with a generously informative booklet.