Brahms - Piano Concerto No 1; Liszt: Trois Odes Funèbres

The Guardian 80

Falvai/Hungarian National PO/Kocsis
(Celestial Harmonies)

The release of these studio recordings, made in Hungary this summer, must have been planned well before Zoltan Kocsis’s death in November. Their appearance now, though, provides a fine memorial to a musician who was much better known, in Britain at least, as a superlative pianist than as a conductor.

The pairing of works is a curious one. The sleeve notes – more on which later – offer no explanation as to why one of Brahms’s best known scores should be yoked in a two-disc set with three orchestral laments by Liszt from 1866 that are rarely heard in concerts. The two composers were hardly stylistic soul mates, and the works have little in common.