Zoltán Kocsis is best known outside of Hungary as a pianist, and is widely regarded as one of the best interpreters of
Debussy and
Bartók. Since 1997, however,
Kocsis has served as music director of the
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and has led it through a period of renewal and growth that many American orchestras would be happy to emulate. This Budapest Music Centre disc, Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Zoltán Kocsis: Schönberg, Varèse, is put together from live concerts given by the orchestra under
Kocsis' direction in 2001 and 2002.
Both recordings are quite dark and muddy, and these are anything but pristine performances of the works represented, namely
Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5, and
Edgard Varèse's Amériques. Neither work was commonly heard in Hungary before the collapse of the Eastern-European communist bloc. If
Varèse and
Schoenberg are sacred to one's tastes, then this disc will not be for you, as the orchestral performances lack focus and coordination, and
Kocsis' approach to both pieces are revisionist in the extreme, tending to be on the fast side, sometimes in conflict with the great deal of flexibility used within
Kocsis' tempos. In his classic 1966
Utah Symphony Orchestra recording of Amériques,
Maurice de Abravanel reaches the "big city" trumpet-led section of the score in about seven and a half minutes, whereas
Kocsis takes about ten to get to the same point, despite a fast introduction! Amériques is marred by a conclusion that dissolves into chaos, but Pelleas und Melisande is a bit more successful performance. Even in Pelleas there are points where one thinks: "it's okay to slow down here a bit." Despite the terrible sloppiness of these performances, they possess a vitality and edge that make them quite an exciting listen.
If one is to fail, then failing in a quest for excellence is always to be preferred. As a realization of either of these works,
Kocsis and the
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra are simply not viable -- not yet. As a document of an orchestra coming out from under the yoke of communism to perform two of the most difficult scores in contemporary literature, this doesn't seem like failure -- it seems like triumph.