p.o. box 30122 tucson, arizona 85751 +1 520 326 4400 fax +1 520 326 3333

Zoltán Kocsis

Sándor Falvai

Zoltán Kocsis – pianist, chief music director, composer One of the most important and most versatile figures on the Hungarian music scene for over forty years, Zoltán Kocsis is one of few Hungarian artists who have also been at the international forefront for a long time. His career started at the age of eighteen when he won the Beethoven Piano Competition of the Hungarian Radio, following which he received numerous invitations to musical centres and festivals around Europe, North and South America and the Middle East. He was just twenty-five when Sviatoslav Richter invited him to appear in solo and four-hand piano recitals at his festival in France and at the Schubertiade in Austria, then organised for the second time. Zoltán Kocsis studied at the Liszt Academy under Pál Kadosa, Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág, among other professors. As a soloist he has appeared with leading orchestras of the world, such as the Berlin, Royal, Vienna and New York Philharmonic Orchestras and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and he has worked together with prominent maestros including Claudio Abbado, Christoph von Dohnányi, Edo de Waart, Charles Mackerras, Lovro von Matačić, Charles Dutoit, Herbert Blomstedt, Michael Tilson, Thomas, Colin Davis and Lorin Maazel. He is one of the world’s leading promoters and interpreters of the music of Béla Bartók. The works of Claude Debussy and Rakhmaninov also constitute an important part of his repertoire. His recording of the French composer’s piano pieces won numerous awards. His recording of all of Rachmaninov’s four piano concertos with the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Edo de Waart was an immense success. He also is considered to be one of the most proficient performers of the music of György Kurtág. The world-famous Hungarian composer dedicated many of his works to him. Kocsis has been artistic director of the multiple award-winning Bartók New Series, launched in 2006. Consisting of 31 records, the series will feature the works of one of the most important composers of the twentieth century in authentic recordings, giving full consideration to the composer’s intentions to the fullest possible extent, and interpreted by the most prominent Hungarian musicians. The series will comprise Kocsis’s recordings of Bartók’s complete works for solo piano. Also, Kocsis will conduct the new authoritative recordings of the composer’s orchestral works. The new recordings of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and The Miraculous Mandarin will be completed in 2016. In May 2016 the first album of Bartók’s choral works came out, with Mátyás Antal conducting the National Choir and the Slovak Philharmonic Choir, and Zoltán Kocsis’s son Krisztián playing the piano. The series has won numerous awards (Midem Classic Award, Diapason d’or, Pizzicato Supersonic Award, Hungaroton Gold Album, Hungaroton Platinium Album, Choc Award of Le Monde de la Musique, Diapason Award, Gramofon Award, BBC Music Magazine Award nomination). Zoltán Kocsis also contributed to Philips Records’ series Great Pianists of the 20th Century, published in 1999. A new chapter in his career opened when he took over at the helm of one of Hungary’s top symphony orchestras, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra (then called the Hungarian State Concert Orchestra). In the two decades since that time the orchestra has undergone renewal, developed a profile to serve as a leading national orchestra. It performs important works missing from the usual repertoire, and has introduced to its audiences the masterpieces of Hungarian music. Under Kocsis’s baton the National Philharmonic Orchestra has performed rarely heard operas and ballets by Richard Strauss, including Daphne, Capriccio, The Silent Woman, The Legend of Joseph and Peace Day. It gave Arnold Schönberg’s massive cantata Gurre-Lieder its Hungarian première, as well as Schönberg’s unfinished opera Moses and Aron. The latter was an international sensation with the third act completed by Zoltán Kocsis in a stylistically faithful composition, in keeping with the composer’s instructions. Also linked with Kocsis’s and the Orchestra’s name are performances of Debussy’s opera Pelléas and Mélisande, and his cantata The Prodigal Son. Kocsis also promotes the cause of 20th and 21st-century, contemporary Hungarian music. He has performed works by major Hungarian composers including György Kurtág, Zoltán Jeney, Sándor Szokolay, Attila Bozay and Zsolt Durkó. Under Kocsis’s baton the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra has appeared with renowned soloists including Kristóf Baráti, Boris Berezovsky, Kirill Gerstein, Gábor Farkas, Barnabás Kelemen, Denis Matsuev, Olli Mustonen, Emanuel Pahud, Miklós Perényi, Dezső Ránki, Alexander Toradze, Arcadi Volodos and Yuja Wang. As chamber musicians Kocsis has appeared with, among other musicians, Miklós Perényi, Barnabás Kelemen, Ferenc Rados, Andrea Rost, Kálmán Berkes, Joshua Bell, Dezső Ránki, Polina Pasztircsák, the Keller String Quartet and the Takács Quartet. Kocsis regularly gives master classes and in his activity as a teacher he is engaged in promoting talent. In addition to Hungarian artists he enjoys working with young musicians from abroad. Some of the most outstanding include Yuja Wang, Denis Kozhukin, Sergey Khachatryan and Alexei Volodin. Kocsis has appeared in major festivals in Edinburgh, Paris, Tours, Luzern, La Roque d’Anthéron, Salzburg, Prague, Menton and Verbier, and he is regularly invited to the juries of international competitions. In addition to his many activities, Zoltán Kocsis also composes. In the 1970s he was a member of the distinguished Hungarian contemporary music workshop, the New Music Studio. A spectacular example of Kocsis’s familiarity with musical styles is the compositional exercise of style, his variations on the Hungarian Christmas song Kiskarácsony, nagykarácsony [Little Christmas, Big Christmas]. This work practically encompasses all the different periods of style of entire music history in the form of 47 variations. The work and the concert film it inspired came out on DVD at Christmas 2011. Some 140 orchestrations and piano transcriptions of works by Bach, Haydn, Johann Strauss, Dvořák, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninov, Wagner, Enescu, Bartók and Kodály are linked with his name. A two-time recipient of the Kossuth Award, the Prima Primissima Prize, the l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic, Kocsis is the first performing artist to have received the Hungarian Olympic Committee’s Fair Play Life Award. He is a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts and in every May for more than twenty-five years he has given a charity concert for the International Children's Safety Service. “One needs to seek the eternally valid, not the definitive. To share with our audiences – in the given moment, the most sincerely and most authentically – our experience of first encountering, and engagement with, the work. I cannot imagine a higher level of ambition.” (Zoltán Kocsis)

Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra The history of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra began in 1923 when the Székesfővárosi Zenekar (Orchestra of the Capital City) was founded. Dezső Bor, founder and principal conductor for fifteen years, was succeeded by Ferenc Fricsay and László Somogyi at the helm of the orchestra after the Second World War. Apart from the two principal conductors, Otto Klemperer also conducted the orchestra on over forty occasions, and Antal Doráti too was a regular guest. The orchestra made its first concert tours abroad around that time. In 1952 János Ferencsik, the most prominent post-war conductor to have stayed in Hungary, was appointed as head of the orchestra, then called Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra. He served as musical director for over thirty years, until his death. From the 1960s onwards the orchestra appeared with many guest conductors, including Ernest Ansermet, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, John Barbirolli, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado and Christoph von Dohnányi, as well as world-famous soloists such as Sviatoslav Richter, Yehudi Menuhin, Anja Silja, János Starker and Ruggiero Ricci. The death of János Ferencsik marked the end of an era. In 1987 the Japanese KOBAYASHI Ken-Ichiro took over at the head of the orchestra, a job he held for ten years. This was followed by a new chapter in the history of the orchestra when in 1997 Zoltán Kocsis became chief music director. In almost two decades since then the orchestra has undergone renewal and, with versatility befitting a national symphony orchestra, it performs not only classical masterpieces but also numerous other important works previously missing from the repertoire, including Hungarian music of the recent past and our days, popular chamber music concerts and events for young people. The Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra has performed the works of rarely heard operas and ballets by Richard Strauss in some ambitious, void-filling projects, including – in order of premières – Daphne, Capriccio, The Silent Woman, The Legend of Joseph and Peace Day. Also linked with the orchestra’s name are performances of Debussy’s opera Pelléas and Mélisande, his cantata The Prodigal Son and the musical mystery play The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. The orchestra gave Arnold Schönberg’s massive cantata Gurre-Lieder its Hungarian première, as well as Schoenberg’s unfinished opera Moses and Aron. The latter was an international sensation with the third act completed by Zoltán Kocsis. The orchestra often plays rarely heard works by Sergei Rakhmaninov and Maurice Ravel, and also promotes the cause of 20th and 21st-century, contemporary Hungarian music. To that end, it has performed works by major Hungarian composers including György Kurtág, Zoltán Jeney, Sándor Szokolay and Zsolt Durkó, often in conjunction with its sister group, the National Choir. Long-term planning is one of the hallmarks of the orchestra. Zoltán Kocsis being one of the most important performers of Bartók, the composer’s œuvre features prominently in the repertoire of the orchestra. Its authoritative interpretations have been published since 2006 in the Bartók New Series which has won numerous awards (Midem Classic Award, Diapason d’or, Pizzicato Supersonic Award, Hungaroton Gold Album, Hungaroton Platinum Album, Choc Award of Le Monde de la Musique, Diapason Award, Gramofon Award, BBC Music Magazine Award nomination). In every year on the eve of the anniversary of Bartók’s death the orchestra perform works by the 20th-century classical composer. Other traditions include staged performances of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, in conjunction with other fields of art, in the Christmas season. The summer evening series of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra boasts a tradition of half a century. In every year in the park of the former Brunszvik Palace in Martonvásár – Hungary’s Beethoven memorial – they perform known and less well-known works by the German composer. In the past two decades the orchestra has undertaken the task of keeping the symphonies of Brahms, Bruckner, Dvořák, Mahler, Mendelssohn and Liszt on its programme. Zoltán Kocsis’s piano transcriptions of works by Debussy, Rakhmaninov and Bartók have also enjoyed popularity. The orchestra’s concerts have featured world-famous guest soloists and conductors, including Boris Berezovsky, Gábor Boldoczki, Ingrid Fliter, Lawrence Foster, Kirill Gerstein, Natalia Gutman, Michail Jurowski, Cyprien Katsaris, Laurent Korcia, Gidon Kremer, Leonid Kuzmin, Sergei Krylov, Denis Matsuev, Carlo Montanaro, Sergei Nakariakov, Emmanuel Pahud, Miklós Perényi, Libor Pešek, Lovro Pogorelich, Dezső Ránki, Vadim Repin, Carlo Rizzi, Andrea Rost, Cristina Ortiz, Thomas Sanderling, Heinrich Schiff, Gilbert Varga, Alexei Volodin, Yuja Wang and Jörg Widmann. One of the pillars of the orchestra’s operation consists of inviting outstanding young Hungarian musicians, many of whom have recently embarked on an international career, such as, among other talents, József Balog, Ádám Banda, Kristóf Baráti, Mihály Berecz, Gábor Bretz, Gábor Farkas, Zoltán Fejérvári, Balázs Fülei, Ivett Gyöngyösi, Júlia Hajnóczy and Barnabás Kelemen. In the past 15 years the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra has given over 300 concerts in some 40 countries. Under the baton of Zoltán Kocsis, the orchestra has appeared in the greatest venues and festivals around the world, including the Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Megaron in Athens, the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, as well as the Colmar and Canary Island Festivals, the Beethoven Festival in Bogotá; in 2011 it appeared in the Bozar Centre in Brussels on the occasion of the Liszt Year and also in the Vatican at a concert given in honour of Pope Benedict. The orchestra is a returning guest in France, Japan, Germany, Romania, Spain, Slovakia and Slovenia. In recent years the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra has also performed in Istanbul, Bogotá and South Korea, and within the 2016-2017 season besides touring in China, is due to give concerts again in Romania, Japan, Poland, and in Spain.