Valse romantique

Zoltán Kocsis (1952 - 2016) was not just a phenomenal pianist. He was also regarded as a musical 'polymath' whose genius embraced the activities of a composer, conductor, editor, instrumentalist, and arranger.

In the last capacity, he added some 150 works to symphonic, chamber, song and piano repertoire. He gladly adapted music of the turn of the 20th century, as appears from his transcriptions of Richard Strauss, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Enescu, and above all, Debussy. (Many of these are distributed by Editio Musica Budapest.)

'In Debussy's case, (...) I was always interested in works that offered possibilities beyond the bounds of the piano, possibilities for orchestration.Just as with Liszt it was often possible to see that certain of his works had been written for piano for publication purposes, so with Debussy it is clear that mainly his song accompaniments exceeded the bounds of possibility for the piano,' Kocsis stated in one interview.

Perhaps that recognition also encouraged him to arrange the popular piano work Valse romantique (1890) for clarinet and piano. The arrangement superbly pinpoints the sensitive, almost ingratiating tunefulness of the Waltz, adding a piece that sounds great and is rewarding to perform to the clarinet repertoire.