If there’s one artist whom every Hungarian music-lover knows, then that artist is surely Zoltán Kocsis. For more than 40 years he has been one of the driving forces on Hungary’s music scene, and musical director of the National Philharmonic Orchestra since 1997. It was in the 1980s that Kocsis recorded Mozart’s piano concertos jointly with his friend and colleague Dezső Ránki and the world-renowned Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, which has now functioned for nearly half a century since its foundation in 1963. “There is an entry on Mozart – I forget now in which lexicon – which states that his life’s work is a shared treasure of humanity. Now what does a shared treasure mean? Something everyone feels is their own, and that everyone has the right to draw from equally,” said Kocsis in an interview with Zsolt Koppány. “Mozart belongs among those indisputable greats whose everlasting value rides out all the waves of fashion. Of course, even the greatest of the greats cannot avoid these waves of fashion, but I believe it is they who avoid them the best. They remain topical in every moment of life, so that even this cannot hurt them. If I had to name no more than ten names from the history of music, then naturally Mozart would stand out even among these. I don’t remember who said of him that he was the most universal genius in the history of ideas. This is undoubtedly true, although in another sense it’s not certain, and I don’t like making such comparisons; it’s possible that a more all-embracing mind or greater spirit existed in the history of music, but a more talented artist – hardly.”

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