A great pianist has died. Hungarian pianist and conductor Zoltán Kocsis died yesterday afternoon. He was 64 years-old. This is especially disturbing to me, since on all my recordings he looks like a kid. And then it occurred to me, he was only 38 when he received the Gramophone Award for his fine album of Debussy piano works. Is 1990 really so far away? Time is passing.
Kocsis cofounded the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer in 1983 (again, so long ago). He became chief conductor and artistic director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic in 1997. His recordings of Debussy and Bartók are particularly fine. He was also a great champion of the works of György Kurtág (who, at 90 years-old, is still very much with us).
I’ll be honoring Kocsis this afternoon with some of his recordings, between 4 and 7:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
Kocsis obituary in the Washington Post. Brace yourself for the photo.