Zoltan Kocsis is one of the great personalities of the music world: enigmatic, brilliant and hugely versatile. He is a pianist, conductor, chamber musician, composer and arranger: a true all-round musician.

As a conductor he is well known for his inventive programming, which often makes use of his own transcriptions, and for his affinity with contemporary music. György Kurtág has dedicated several compositions to Mr Kocsis, which he has performed across Europe.

In 1983, Zoltan Kocsis founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Ivan Fischer and served as an artistic director until 1997. During those 14 years the orchestra established itself at the highest level, appearing in series at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Barbican, the Musikverein, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and Carnegie Hall in New York. The orchestra also performed at the Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals, the BBC Proms in London and the Prague Spring Festival. In 1995, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Béla Bartók’s death, their Bartók series achieved enormous success in Brussels, Frankfurt, Cologne, Paris and New York.

In 1998, Mr Kocsis was appointed Music Director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Amongst the remarkable concerts  which characterised his first year with the orchestra was a performance of Schoenberg‘s Gurrelieder, which was regarded as the highlight of the Budapest Spring Festival. This season and next he tours extensively with the orchestra, often performing his original transcriptions and compositions.

As a guest conductor, Zoltan Kocsis has worked with the Philharmonia, WDR Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Finnish Radio Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonie Essen, and the Czech Philharmonic.

Zoltan Kocsis has been an exclusive artist with Philips Classics since the late 1970s. He has also recorded for Denon, Hungarotron, Nippon Columbia and Quintana. His recordings have earned him considerable acclaim and he has been the recipient of several prizes, including the Edison prize and prizes from Gramophone. In 2005 he finished recording the complete series of Bartók’s piano music (both solo and with orchestra).