Arts News

Pianist Zoltan Kocsis loses newly completed opera in break in

Dec 4, 2009, 15:14 GMT

Budapest - Thieves made off with a laptop containing a new music score written by Zoltan Kocsis when they broke into his home on Thursday, the famous pianist and conductor told the Hungarian news agency MTI.

The director of music for the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra was asleep upstairs when the burglars struck in the early hours of the morning.

Kocsis had been working on a score for the unfinished third act of late Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg's opera Moses and Aaron.

With the blessing of Schoenberg's heirs, Kocsis was using a few surviving drafts of the Viennese modernist's work to complete the piece, which has never been performed whole.

'The world premier is scheduled for January 16, which hopefully will not have to be postponed if there is a way to reconstruct the score or the laptop turns up,' Kocsis said.