As a pianist, Zoltan Kocsis (who is also a conductor, composer and musicologist) is at once fastidious, interpretatively innovative and profoundly respectful of the recorded legacies left to us by major artists of the past – most notably those of Bartok and Rachmaninov. Listening to his recording of Rachmaninov’s Fourth Concerto reawakens memories of the composer’s own (on a ten-disc RCA set – 3/93). Furthermore, Edo de Waart and his San Francisco players are with him every bar of the way (just listen to those repeated notes on brass and woodwind near the beginning of the piece), heightening the drama of the outer movements, and tenderizing the wistful Largo.
The solo playing is agile and quick-witted, with amazing finger velocity and a distinctive brand of rubato. Sudden switches in mood betray lightning reflexes and the piano tone is never brittle or clangorous. I therefore imagined that Kocsis’s arrangement of the Vocalise might subscribe to the same taut, trimly tailored pianistic aesthetic, but no: what we hear is malleable almost to excess and, towards the end of the piece, extravagantly decorated. I had always thought of the Vocalise as a sort of successor to Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defunte, but Kocsis trades its restful sense of melancholy for something altogether more overtly demonstrative. The C sharp minor Prelude is given a far more central reading, and a brilliant one at that.
Memories of Rachmaninov also inform Kocsis’s approach to Grieg’s Op. 43 Lyric Pieces. I think in particular of the chirruping ‘Voglein’ and of ‘Erotik’ which – unlike the Vocalise – allows for phrasal freedom while holding fast to the musical line. Again, ‘An den Fruhling’ displays a controlled impetuosity reminiscent of Rachmaninov’s playing style. Control is a very Kocsisian attribute, and helps forge aural sculpture out of Debussy’s two early Arabesques. The Suite bergamasque is scarcely less accomplished (‘Clair de lune’ found me hanging on to every note) whereas Estampes and D’un cahier d’esquisses balance sensuality and spontaneity.
Kocsis brings a winning lilt to L’isle joyeuse, though his fingerwork remains extraordinarily clear. Regarding the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, Philips’s annotator quotes Kocsis as drawing a parallel between its three movements and the three main characters in Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande – excusing the fact that the music pre-dates the play with the idea that the material was in some way ‘in the air’. An interesting idea, though the actual performance – a fine one, by any standards – centres more on clarity than atmosphere.
Which leaves the Liszt, Bartok and Dohnanyi, Kocsis’s great compatriot-forebears and music that is central to his repertoire. The Nursery Variations combines fun with pianistic finesse and, like Debussy’s Fantaisie, is superbly accompanied by Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra (which Fischer and Kocsis co-founded). Liszt’s ochre-tinted fountain is viewed with the hindsight of Bartok (or so it seems): Kocsis’s performance attends rather more to the music’s harmonic constituents than to its virtuoso aspect. And then there are Bartok’s Romanian Folkdances, idiomatic, characterful and musically satisfying. Even given the copious virtues of such distinguished Bartokians as Sandor, Schiff, Ranki and Foldes, Kocsis still strikes me as the finest of all – and his growing Philips Bartok discography (Mikrokosmos is imminent) is one of the pianistic glories of the CD era. But if you want a more general overview of this great pianist’s considerable art, then Philips have certainly provided you with one. The recorded sound has great presence.'