Pannon Philharmonic

Conductor

Zoltán Kocsis

Zoltán Kocsis was born in 1952 in Budapest, began playing the piano at age five. From 1963, he studied piano and  composition at Béla Bartók Vocational Secondary School of Music; and then he got admitted to Franz Liszt Music Academy in 1968 as a student of Pál Kadosa and… More

About the Programme

With the childhood festivities, the Hungarian song Little Christmas, Bigger Christmas ... becomes part of us, forever. Zoltán Kocsis’s composition of the same title is a gift in every sense of the word. The composer wrote the –at first only– six variations of the song on her daughter, Viktória Kocsis’s request for Christmas 2009; and after the premiere held in the family circle, it has grown to a 45-variation-composition. According to the composer, the song, which was collected by Kodály, hadn’t stop exciting him because of the inherent possibilities of harmonization and then he recognised with surprise the adequacy of the song when embedded in different styles. The composition is much more than a bunch of variations inspired by a Christmas song; it spans over ages and continents; and showing different nations’ relationship to music, with its effortless, entertaining but festive tunes, it let you have insight into the music culture of centuries.