Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy [Paperback]

In 1924, Geza Revesh published The Psychology of a Musical Prodigy, a scholarly study which focused on Ervin Nyiregyhazi's childhood and early gifts. Over 80 years later, Revesh's book remains a reference work. But what happened to the subject of that book?

Kevin Bazzana's book is the first to document the rest of Nyiregyhazi's life in detail, from his spectacular 1920 Carnegie Hall debut, to his early flameout a few years later, and his bizarre resurrection in the 1970s.

During the middle period of his life, previously undocumented, Nyiregyhazi relentlessly indulged dual addictions for alcohol and sex. Aside from composing doggedly old fashioned works with silly titles, Nyiregyhazi's activity in the musical community ground to a halt. He did not practice, nor did he even own a piano. The last was understandable because he did not have a stable residence. Bazzana has chronicled these winter years (roughly 1925-1972, although the pianist did some rewarding work with the WPA in the 1930s) in great detail. Nyiregyhazi married ten times. Although Bazzana mentions all his wives, it's not easy keeping the chronology in sequence because Bazzana goes back and forth between time periods. Perhaps a chart would have been helpful!

While much been has made of Nyiregyhazi's treatment by the music industry (in 1925, he was compelled to sue his manager), it becomes apparent reading Bazzana's book that the main reason for the collapse of Nyiregyhazi's career was the pianist himself. He was loathe to play standard repertoire, especially in later years, because he feared comparison with other pianists. The fact that he refused to practice, even when provided with a piano, did not help his playing.

Bazzana does not pretend to be objective. He believes that Nyiregyhazi belongs in the pantheon of great pianists, and complains that the Hungarian, also a "great pianist," was not afforded the 1903 centennial celebration that was given to Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Horowitz, and Rudolf Serkin. Bazzana seems to be particularly obsessed with Horowitz, taking trouble to note that Nyiregyhazi was "not very much impressed" with his Russian contemporary and seeming perturbed that Nyiregyhazi perished with a mere $2,000 to his name while Horowitz's estate was valued at between $6 and $8 million. Horowitz's opinion of Nyiregyhazi is unknown. Other musicians' opinions of Nyiregyhazi ranged from to "pure expression" (Arnold Schoenberg), to "an amateur" (Vladimir Ashkenazy) and "the biggest piece of baloney" (Earl Wild). Nyiregyhazi seldom garnered a neutral response, and Bazzana can be forgiven the occasional hyperbole in his recounting of the pianist's extraordinary and tragic story.

This book is a triumph of the biographer's art. But the subject of the biography is sad beyond words. Ervin Nyiregyházi (pronounced, approximately NEER-edge-hawzy) was a profoundly gifted musical child prodigy, born in 1903 in Budapest and compared with Mozart in his youth. His first biography, written by Hungarian psychologist Géza Révész in 1910-1914 when the child was only 7-11, is one of the most detailed studies of a child genius ever written. Kevin Bazzana, a Canadian whose previous biography of Glenn Gould was acclaimed, pursued his subject's life story for more than ten years and looked under virtually every stone in search of material about his subject. Other reviewers here have detailed his sad descent from feted prodigy to sex-obsessed skidrow bum with his odd autumn in the sun when he was 'rediscovered' in the 1970s and a few recordings put on the market. Those recordings revealed the wreck of a great pianist, one with an obsession for emotional expression perhaps at the expense of technical finesse. Those records sold rather well and pianistic cognoscenti debated their worth, and still do.

Nyiregyházi considered himself more a composer than a pianist, but frankly little is known of his works. They were apparently typically slow, lugubrious and cryptic; many of them had bizarre autobiographical titles. For instance, toward the end of his life he wrote pieces with titles such as 'Hopeless Vista', 'The Grim Reaper Approaches', 'Time is Running Out', 'With Slow Footsteps Death Approaches'. From the reproduction of one of his pieces, the aforementioned 'Hopeless Vista', one gathers that his style was to write brief, harmonically odd works that attempt to convey a single emotional state. I could make little of 'Hopeless Vista' except that it would certainly not be a crowd-pleaser. Which brings us to the crux of Nyiregyházi's life -- his refusal to make compromises with the public appetite, his profoundly idiosyncratic style of making music, his incredibly inept psychological coping mechanisms and his dependence of a series of ten wives and many other women and men who at least briefly attempted to help him. A psychiatrist/pianist who knew him offered the likelihood of a diagnosis of 'borderline personality disorder', and as a psychiatrist myself I would tend to agree with this diagnosis, dangerous though it be to diagnose without ever having personally examined him. Certainly his tendency to have wildly fluctuating moods over a matter of minutes or hours, his intense interpersonal sensitivity that became outright paranoia at times, his inflated sense of his own importance coupled nonetheless with intense self-doubts, his furious reaction to what he considered insulting behavior of others and his alcoholism and sexual compulsions all point to this severe diagnosis. In short, he couldn't help himself, couldn't stop his inexorable path toward self-destruction. A sad, sad case.

Kevin Bazzana has written a riveting book, not sparing us either the outré details of Nyiregyházi's life nor his brief and soaring triumphs. I found myself unable to put the book down.

Strongly recommended both as a work of art and as a fascinating story.

Scott Morrison

There's always something to discover around the figure of a sheer pianist. Specially of we are talking about the most eccentric pianist the world knew about. You may cite Mr. Gould, but in the case of Erwin Nyiregyhazi we are talking about a sheer artist, a thinker musician, that never gave a affected sound, although he was a Romantic per excellence.

When I had the chance to listen in 1976 his double album "Nyiregyhazi plays Liszt" and listened his performance about The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 3, I could not believe such high caliber pianism, his sound was indeed profound, revealing and sumptuously expressive: His octaves, tremolos, arpeggios and fortes were really amazing. But when I listened Mosonyi' s Funeral Procession I understood why he was so highly acclaimed. He really played the piano as it was an orchestra, a full rounded sound with an astonishing sense of the span.

Of course you may argue he played some wrong bars here and there, but what does it matter ? , when you know about his main target was to capture the essence of the work.

Kevin Bazzana gives a very detailed account about his personality, his obsessive way of living (after all, the excesses have always been a trademark in the spirit of all Romantic don' t you?).

What we really regret was his personal decision to exile himself for so long. Certainly his reappearance in 1973 was motive of jubilee all over the world.

To get close this artist of the piano demands a total obliteration of all our mental map and to assist to a true artistic experience with all its in and outs.

A penetrating and passionate biography about the most eccentric pianist of the XX Century.

Here you have a brave opinion of Mr. Nyiregyhazi: "My approach is a combination of instinct and conscious morality. It is not sin to change a score, but you can' t do it in a frivolous way. An artist has to impose a sense of responsibility on the music. He must never violate the faith of the composer. That is a matter of artistic honor."