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

by Kevin Bazzana

Book Overview

Born in Budapest in 1903, Ervin Nyiregyhazi (nyeer-edge-hah-zee) was composing at two, giving his first public recital at six, and performing all over Europe by eight. He was soon recognized as one of the most remarkable child prodigies in history and became the subject of a four-year study by a psychologist. By twenty-five, he had all but disappeared. Mismanaged, exploited, and insistent on an intensely Romantic style, his career foundered in adulthood...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786720883
• ISBN13: 9780786720880
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 383 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

maybe the best partial eye possible

good book, given the fact that Nyiregyhazi had been'in hiding from the public' for most of his life. I wish there could have been more information on him.

Engrossing, can't put it down!

Am only half way through this book, but can't put it down! Fascinating, well researched and nicely written narrative of a fascinating, deeply flawed genius. Nicely done indeed!

"Lying in the Gutter, But Looking at the Stars"

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 eit

How can we approach to a genius of the keyboard?

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."