(…) Puccini's Tosca does not belong to the chapter of rarities, since it is one of the most popular and frequently played music dramas in the literature and is also a permanent repertoire piece at the Opera House – but the Music Academy was pleasantly filled for a concert hall performance. Besides the attraction of […]
There is no doubt about one thing: the success of the idea. The Music Academy Tosca performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra produced such a powerful, spontaneous and positive reaction from the audience which only the human voice is capable. When Tosca shouts her final words, this being a concert performance, she does not plunge […]
(…) The National Philharmonic performed Mahler's Fourth Symphony, conducted by a routine Austrian conductor Leopold Hager, whom we can fairly describe as second rate. It happens that an orchestra does not or can only partially realise its conductor's conception; on this occasion however, the reverse was the case: the musicians own initiatives demanded shaping, which […]
Perhaps the National Philharmonic Orchestra cannot give a finer present to the their Music Director, celebrating his fiftieth birthday in a mere two weeks time, than that extended to him at this concert. True, Zoltán Kocsis was not present, and so the real celebration is still to come, but this was precisely the gift: that […]
The concert of the National Philharmonic on April 29 radiated power, strength, discipline and remarkable musicianship from the orchestra, its conductor Zoltán Kocsis and the viola soloist Kim Kashkashian. The amassed forces on the stage of the Academy of Music played ear-splittingly loudly when called upon, but also followed every subtle nuance of the director, […]
Zoltán Kocsis on instruments, orchestras, conducting and other things We owe the honorary title to this interview to the charter presented to Liszt awarding him the title of freeman of Sopron. In this following interview, we have attempted to circumscribe Zoltán Kocsis using it.(…) Let us try to measure just who is Zoltán Kocsis. We […]
The concert by the National Philharmonic Orchestra pitted the music of Bartók and Debussy against each other. As the opening number, Zoltán Kocsis conducted a rarely heard composition: Debussy's symphonic poem Printemps. This is an early work (1887), written while the composer was enduring his Prix de Rome scholarship. Following on from Kocsis's baton, the […]
