German recording producer/music publisher and founder of the well-respected Celestial Harmonies label, Eckart Rahn, recently celebrated his first fifty years in his profession, having produced his first (then vinyl) album in August of 1966. As a present to himself on the occasion, he gave himself carte blanche to record whatever he wished. He had a long term wish to record Sándor Falvai, so a trip was planned to Hungaryand whilst there had the opportunity to meet Zoltán Kocsis. Falvai, Kocsis and Rahn immediately struck up a co-operative relationship, and a friendship developed. Rahn had heard Kocsis and his Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra with the Brahms First Symphony in concert, and he knew Falvai’s Brahms First Piano Concerto on record—soon all this jelled into the proposal to record the first Brahms concerto with Kocsis, Falvai and the HNPO. But something more special, something rare, something more original seemed to be missing. Again, turning the clock back for thirty-five years, more or less, Rahn remembered hearing a widely unknown Liszt work, Trois odes funèbres, a work very beautiful in its melancholic character, on the Bavarian Radio in Germany. This double CD with the Brahms concerto and Liszt's odes hasd just started to receive a very favourable reception, but then fate struck; as an almost cynical irony Kocsis passed away at the relatively young age—at least for a conductor—of just 64, on the Sunday following the release of his last recording. Liszt had composed a major work, accepting death as inspiration, and Kocsis got closer to the composer's wish to have the trilogy performed together and to see Les Morts and La notte played at the funeral. Liszt's Trois odes funèbres became Kocsis's swan-song, a deep and great work graced by the contribution of a wonderful man and musician.
