György Kosa

György Kosa was born on 24 April 1897 in Budapest (Hungary). His mother took care of a musical education and so he received professional piano lessons from an early age. When György Kosa was 7 years old his piano teacher presented him to Bela Bartok who immediately recognised the talent. So from 1905 to 1916 György Kosa studied at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest under Bela Bartok and Ernö Dohnanyi (piano) and Albert Siklos, Viktor Herzfeld and Zoltan Kodaly (composition).
After his studies György Kosa worked as a pianist. First as an accompanist to the violinists Ferenc Vecsey and Janos Koncz, later as a soloist himself. Beside his piano activities György Kosa also worked on his career as a composer. For example his "6 pieces for orchestra" were premiered 1922 by conductor Ernö Dohnanyi and were again performed under Erich Kleiber at the 1925 Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Venice. In the 1928 György Kosa was also involved in the founding of the composer group Modern Magyar Muzsikusok (Modern Hungarian Musicians) together with Pal Kadosa, Istvan Szelenyi, Ferenc Szabo and Hugo Kelen.
In 1927 György Kosa became piano teacher at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, a position he held until his retirement in 1960.
György Kosa died on 16 August 1984 in Budapest (Hungary).

The work catalogue of György Kosa contains 8 operas, 8 ballets, 9 symphonies, 8 string quartets, several other orchestral and chamber music, 25 oratorios and cantatas as well as many songs.

Andante e Vivace

In my possession is the autograph manuscript of a composition for cello and piano by György Kosa. The original title is "Gordonkadarab (lassu es gyors)" which means "Cello piece (slow and fast)". The words in brackets refer to the two movements 1. Andante melancolico and 2. Vivace. The work was composed in 1948 and later published by Editio Musica Budapest under the title "Andante e Vivace".
The manuscript comes from the estate of renowned Hungarian cellist Vera Denes (1915-1970) and has an inscription to her by György Kosa on the title page.