It was in the brand-new Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco that Hungarian pianist Zoltán Kocsis recorded, between 1982 and 1984, Sergei Rachmaninov's complete works for piano, conducted by Dutch maestro Edo de Waart, who was then the musical director of the Californian city's orchestra, a symbol of counterculture and tolerance. In 1964, at the age of 23, he had won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition and became assistant to Bernstein in New York.
With his baby face and tumbling hair, Zoltán Kocsis, who died prematurely in 2016, was every inch the musician, moved by an intense inner flame and an appetite for life which would consume him. An ardent pianist, a demanding conductor, composer, transcriber, and orchestrator, he excelled in the works of Bartók and Liszt, and was also a particularly inspired performer of Debussy and Ravel. A music critic in his day, he composed, amongst other things, a symphonic poem inspired by the Chernobyl tragedy. This complete recording of Rachmaninov's concertos is thrilling in more ways than one. First of all, thanks to his rapid and fluid tempos, which are close to those in the performances left behind by the composer; but also because Kocsis has mastered lyrical passages, where he can let himself go without a hint of complacency. His hands run across the keyboard like the wind, carried by an eye-popping virtuosity which gives a breath of fresh air and new life to these works which often suffer from "over-performance". © François Hudry/Qobuz