Ervin Nyíregyházi

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The young Ervin Nyiregyházi

Ervin Nyíregyházi (born January 19, 1903 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary , † April 13, 1987 in Los Angeles ) was an American pianist of Hungarian-Jewish origin.

The wounderchild

István Thomán , a Liszt student who retired in 1906 and whose student Béla Bartók had also been, gave Nyiregyházi the first lesson sporadically. At the age of five Nyiregyházi received lessons from Arnold Székely , himself a student of Thomán, at the Royal Hungarian Music Academy until the family left Hungary in 1914. Further teachers were Ernő Dohnányi and in Berlin Frederic Lamond . At the time, the boy was considered the “second Liszt ”; his beginnings as a “child prodigy” had repeatedly evoked comparisons with Mozart.

In 1910 the “child prodigy” aroused the interest of the psychologist Géza Révész , who accompanied him in a study over four years. Révész applied the new tests developed by Frenchman Alfred Binet, which found that Ervin's intelligence was three to four years higher than that of his peers. Before he studied composition, he was already composing - at the age of six. He had perfect pitch and could transpose works by Bach, Haydn or Beethoven if he had seen the sheet of music. (Today we would say that he had a photographic memory .)

At the age of eight he played in 1911 at Buckingham Palace in front of Queen Mary and the future King Edward VIII. With the Berliner Philharmoniker under Max Fiedler , he played Beethoven's C minor concerto on October 14, 1915 and the Concerto A on October 21, 1918. Major No. 2 for piano by Franz Liszt with the accompaniment of the orchestra under Arthur Nikisch . The pianists Wilhelm Backhaus , Artur Schnabel and Ferruccio Busoni were his contemporaries. In 1918 he gave concerts in Denmark, 1919 in Norway and 1919–20 in Sweden.

In America

At 17 he made his sensational debut in New York. The Carnegie Hall was sold out several times. Ervin Nyiregyházi set out to set records. At 19 he gave up to twenty concerts a month. His repertoire was enormous: Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, a little Mozart, but Chopin, Grieg, Debussy, Sibelius and so on. And of course: Franz Liszt, of whom he soon mastered over 60 of the most difficult compositions, which earned him the nickname "second Liszt". In 1921 he performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux and played the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 by Liszt. At the same time he appeared with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Ossip Gabrilowitsch .

In 1925 he sued his concert manager RE Johnston, who he alleged that he was neglecting him because he had to accompany singers and instrumentalists. He lost the process. It then became difficult for him to find engagements. He also refused to make any further recordings for the automatic pianos emerging at the time. In addition, he refused to play the well-known pianist repertoire because he feared comparison with other pianists. He preferred to play transcriptions of his own works. From then on he came across wrong advisers and wrong friends. He lived beyond his means and became impoverished.

At the West Coast

In 1928 Nyiregyházi moved to Los Angeles. His Hungarian compatriot Bela Lugosi , in whom he found a soul mate, and who became an acclaimed actor through his film Dracula in 1931 , invited him to concerts in his house and got him work at United Artists, where he orchestrated and arranged film music.

In 1926 he married a woman 11 years older than him for the first time. He discovered his sexuality late, which he then became obsessed with. He married for money, love, sex, or for convenience. He's also had hundreds of affairs, including Hollywood greats like Gloria Swanson . He claimed that his tremendous libido made him a tremendous pianist.

In 1935 Arnold Schoenberg wrote enthusiastically about him to Otto Klemperer , who was leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the time. During a music evening in the presence of Klemperer, Nyiregyházi simply changed Chopin's hair: when he performed the B minor sonata, he replaced its finale with that of the B minor sonata and transposed it half a tone lower in order to adapt it to B minor. He found this conclusion more splendid and much more plausible. Otto Klemperer was horrified. In October 1936 Nyiregyházi was heard again with the Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles under the conductor Modest Altschuler and in 1938 with the same conductor and the Symphony Orchestra of Pasadena.

Nyiregyhazi engaged in affairs with almost anyone willing, men and women. There was also no stopping the lover of his friend Theodor Dreisers , which then cost him his friendship with good connections. He was easy to influence and was unaware of the injuries he was causing other people. For reasons unknown, he did not leave children behind. Six marriages ended in divorce, three of his wives died before him.

In 1940 Nyiregyházi received American citizenship.

Gradually he gave up his concert career and moved to cheap hotels. He later said that he had always hated the stage appearances that made him feel like he was still under his mother's influence.

For the film “A Song to Remember” about Chopin's life in 1945, his hands were shown playing the piano, but José Iturbi was hired to record the soundtrack. The record with the film music was sold millions of times. That was typical of Nyiregyházi's life. But he also had a reputation for being a womanizer and drinker, as well as being unreliable, and was known for his temperamental outbursts.

His panic fear of performing on stage meant that at times he only appeared incognito with a hangman's hood. He tried a comeback once and performed in Los Angeles in 1946. He wore a face mask, was sold as "Pianist X" and played Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff and Liszt's Mephisto waltz. The audience was blown away.

In 1972 he appeared again in public for the first time in 17 years in order to be able to pay his ninth wife's medical bills. When he performed at the Old First Church, San Francisco in May 1973, a listener recorded the performance on Casette. Nyiregyházi sent this volume to Gregor Benko of the International Piano Library in New York. The record company CBS then released two long-playing records from this recording. Nyiregyházi's estate thus escaped oblivion by a hair's breadth.

In 1980 and 1982 Nyiregyházi went on a concert tour to Japan, where he was an idol. However, he seemed to prefer the obscurity in Los Angeles.

He died of cancer on April 13, 1987 in Los Angeles and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

He left behind more than 2000 compositions, most of which remained unpublished.

literature

  • Kevin Bazzana: Pianist X. The life story of an eccentric genius . From the Canadian English by Birgit Irgang. Schott, Mainz 2007, ISBN 3-7957-0599-1 ( Lost Genius. The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto 2007)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kevin Bazzana: LOST GENIUS. - page 21
  2. ↑ G. Revesz: The Psychology of a Prodigy (PDF; 571 kB). Engl. Edition: Publisher: Paul Kegan, London 1925
  3. ↑ Piano roles with the American Piano Company (AMPICO) ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nyiregyhazi.org
  4. ↑ A Song to Remember
  5. ↑ Kevin Bazzana: Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick. - in excerpts
personal data
SURNAME Nyíregyházi, Ervin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-American pianist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1987
Place of death los Angeles