Ervin Nyiregyhazi, Pianist
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Last edited: 18-Jul-2005
Ervin Nyiregyhazi, Pianist
It is with deep gratitude that Gregor Benko has permitted me to republish his liner notes to Nyiregyhazi Plays Liszt, Recordings from the Collection of International Piano Archives.
Please contact webmaster@nyiregyhazi.org with corrections (there are many, due to errors introduced by the optical character recognition software used to extract text from the scanned notes).
The story of the pianist Ervin Nyiregyházi and of this recording is one of the most touching, dramatic and bizarre in the history of the piano, as well as one of the most fascinating chapters of my life. It began for me in July 1973, while I was visiting I.P.A.'s West Coast representative Terry McNeill. Ten weeks earlier he had attended a piano recital in San Francisco, intrigued by the announcement for a pianist whose name he neither knew nor could pronounce: Ervin Nyiregyházi. Using an inadequate cassette machine, Terry had recorded the performance, and now insisted I hear the tape.
Nyiregyházi's playing came as a revelation. Although the tape was a miserable recording, it had captured enough to suggest that Nyiregyházi possessed a bigger tone than either Hofmann or Horowitz. I was stunned.
I had read dozens of accounts of how
Liszt and Henselt, Busoni and Rubinstein had played, but never before had
I heard a living pianist who played entirely with that 19th century sense
of rhetoric which the old writers had described: the true "Romantic
Style". Irresistibly compelled, Terry and I began to pursue Nyiregyházi.
Through the good offices of the Old First Church in San Francisco (where
Nyiregyházi's recital had taken place) we obtained both the pianist's
address and another poorly-recorded tape of the recital. Soon we found
ourselves face to face with the pianist himself. Mr. Nyiregyházi, a tall
man of seventy, paradoxically appeared both strong and frail. His
threadbare clothes, his stoic visage and slight stoop conveyed a strong
impression: here was a man whose life had been a long, arduous trial. But
the years had not depleted his spirit. A few words are insufficient to
describe him, for he radiates an aura of aristocratic vulnerability as
well as spirituality and a quixotic stubbornness, all combined in one
uniquely attractive personality.
He
talked with us at some length about his background and career, as well as
his attitudes and ideals. In our enthusiasm, unfortunately, we gave him a
"third degree" grilling, for meeting the pianist only served to intensify
our fascination.
He answered all our questions in a courtly, old-fashioned way, telling us part of his amazing story without once revealing a trace of bitterness or egotism. It was apparent that he was still, at seventy, the most innocent of idealists, and that he must have suffered greatly because of it. We learned of the many triumphs of his early life, but did not dwell on his more recent past. Nyiregyházi told us that "it was a combination of factors by design and otherwise" that had abruptly and completely halted his career many years ago. He told us it was simply "the vicissitudes of life" that had forced him to give up his career.
This and everything else he said during that interview and later was related with genuine modesty and humility which quite surprised me, a veteran of many skirmishes with pianistic egos. It is not that Nyiregyházi has ever lacked confidence or pride in his own intellectual and musical abilities. But he does seem capable of a much greater philosophical perspective than most other musicians I have met.
I was disturbed by this unusual man's quiet acceptance of what seemed the great injustice of his situation: here was a supreme pianist, still able to play; but not only was he not playing, he was virtually unknown! I determined to learn everything I could about Nyiregyházi's career. I thought there might even be some recordings, although I had heard of only a few Ampico rolls which the pianist said were not accurate representations of his playing.
A few days after the interview, Terry and I obtained invitations to another rare recital Nyiregyházi was to play in a private home. I shall never forget hearing him play Schubert's "Wanderer-Fantasie" to open his program. The poorly-recorded tapes had not misinformed me: now that I could hear him myself, I knew that his tone was as large as I had supposed and that his actual sound has a strange, uniquely compelling emotional effect. That afternoon everyone in the small audience was aware of being given a glimpse of an elemental force.
During intermission I tried to talk to Nyiregyházi. It was very difficult, for he is apparently so crippled by nervousness when he plays in public that he can function only by immersing himself in his own private musical world.
Later, at I.P.A.'s New York headquarters, I played the Nyiregyházi tapes for dozens of visitors, who were all as admiring and astonished as I. Among these new admirers were Alicia de Larrocha, Jorge Bolet and Garrick Ohlsson (who later visited and played for Nyiregyházi). I also played the tapes for Harold C. Schonberg, one of the most knowledgeable of piano connoisseurs. He exclaimed: "I never dreamed I would hear a true 19th century pianist living in the 20th century."
Ervin Nyiregyházi was born in Budapest on January 19,1903. His father was a tenor in the Royal Opera chorus there, his mother an excellent amateur pianist. According to a source who knew them, both possessed natural musical gifts. But it was Ervin's father who had the more intimate relationship with and understanding of music. These musical but ordinary parents soon discovered that their son was one of the most exceptional child prodigies in musical history. At the age of one, Ervin was already imitating his father's singing. Like Handel, he could sing before he could talk. When he was two, an uncle gave him a toy piano on which, from the first day, Ervin could pick out the tunes his father sang. At three, he was discovered to have perfect pitch. Soon he could reproduce any melody he heard, on either the toy piano or a harmonica. He had still not learned to talk. (Of the many well-documented stories of young Ervin's Mozartian abilities, my favorite concerns the five year-old's visit to the dentist. When asked to stick out his tongue and say "La", little Ervin said "That's not 'La' you said, that was 'Fa'.")
Although he already--uncannily--knew how to play, Ervin started piano lessons at four and-a-half when he also began composing, He had extemporized melodies and fragments earlier, but his first formal compositions date from 1907. That year Puccini visited Budapest to conduct a performance of "Madama Butterfly" in which Mr. Nyiregyházi appeared. The father explained the Japanese basis of the story. Ervin's first composition, he remembers, was a "Japanese" piece. In a few months the boy was taken to the cellist David Popper and the composer Julius Erkel, professors at the Musical Academy. He played, astonishingly, a recital of his own compositions. News of the boy's musical gifts soon began to circulate throughout Europe.
Mrs. Nyiregyházi was eager to exploit Ervin's gifts, but fortunately her husband wanted only to nurture and protect the boy's talents. His will prevailed. It was inevitable that Ervin not be treated like a normal child; as he grew, everything was done to relieve him of responsibility for all but his intellectual and musical development. Although he was a genius, he was also a healthy and vigorous boy with normal desires to play and get into mischief. These his mother thwarted so often that by time he was five, conflicts arose which were to last their life together.
At this point the director of Amsterdam's Psychological Laboratory, Dr. Géza Révész, began to study Ervin as part of an investigation into the nature of infant musical talent. The experiment lasted six years and its findings were published in 1924 in the only scholarly book ever published on the subject. The Psychology of a Musical Prodigy is now considered a cornerstone of the literature on child psychology and is available in reprinted editions published by both Arno and Greenwood. Professor Révész notated some of Ervin's childhood compositions and, by testing him with scientific techniques, verified his natural abilities to memorize, improvise, transpose, modulate, sight read and so on. The psychologist wrote:
His personality as a child bore a marked resemblance to that of the infant Mozart. His creative gift, his general immature development, the keenness and ease of his creative ability, the rapidity of his artistic evolution, his remarkable talent for instrumental technique, his great love of art, as well as his intelligence, which is above the normal level, his wit, his joy in life, his tenderness, his devotion to his parents, and, finally, his attachment to his teachers, are all of them features which are inseparable from the picture of the child Mozart.
Révész emphasized that Ervin was generally able to perform any learned task without error. He concluded that the boys amazing gifts were dependent not on a precocious ability to learn, but rather his evidently unlimited musical gifts were somehow "predeveloped". He did not need to practice to play anything he wanted, any way he wanted. If his hands couldnt encompass a composition, his intellect could, and he would find a way round his physical obstacle. His memory and ear were almost infallible. The child seemed to be a completely equipped pianist already and a most wonderfully endowed musician. Révész reported: "Music was the center of his interest at this time, to which there was gradually added an intense wish on his part to acquire information on all possible subjects. School did not satisfy his thirst for knowledge."
Ervin performed in public for the first time at Flume in 1909. He was six, and played a Haydn sonata, several Grieg Lyric Pieces and Chopin Waltzes, and some of his own compositions. One of these was a funeral march for piano and cello, the first of his works he was able to notate himself.
The next year Ervin was enrolled as a regular student at the Academy of Music, studying theory with Leo Weiner and Albert Slides, and piano with both Istvan (Stephen) Toman, a former Liszt pupil, and Arnold Szekely, Tomans own pupil. Ervins progress was so remarkable that in June 1911 he was invited to play for Queen Mary in Buckingham Palace. Except for an occasional "command performance", Ervin did not play in public: the family, while not wealthy, did not need the money which exploiting him might have brought in.
But there were problems. The pianist vividly remembers: "I was a very strong-willed little boy." Ervin and his mother often clashed. Small wonder, for two more different personalities would be hard to imagine: the mother was earthbound, cynical and even materialistic, while the son was idealistic, enthusiastic and spiritually inclined.
The death in 1914 of Ervins father was the first in a sequence of events which had a deep influence on his life. His father had been Ervins best friend, and perhaps because of the hot-house atmosphere fostered by the mother, the father may also have been the only link the boy had with the outside world of healthy relationships. "My father tried to further my musical studies. After his death, mother tried to influence me against any music that was not lucrative."
Mrs. Nyiregyházi knew opportunities were more abundant in an international musical capital, and in January 1914 the family (mother, Ervin and four year-old brother) moved to Berlin. They enjoyed the patronage of many influential people, among them the English Duke of Connaught. But by August, World War I had begun, and the Dukes help ceased to reach Berlin.
But the war affected their lives only slightly, and in Berlin in May 1915, Ervin was able to hear Busoni ("He was the greatest") in Beethovens Choral Fantasy with Strauss conducting. Until he first heard Busoni and Paderewski, it was Lhevinne and DAlbert who had most impressed him. He heard concerts by Friedman, Backhaus ("I liked him very much"), Godowsky ("I liked his sound very much"), and Hofmann ("I admired him, but his playing was a bit too objective to suit my personal temperament.") [How historical and critical perspectives change!]
Ervin began to tour Austria, Germany and Hungary; he enjoyed the respect accorded him as a concert artist, though he was only eleven. He made his orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Max Fiedler on October 14, 1915, playing the Beethoven Third. A glance through some of his early programs shows that he was carrying a large repertoire, regularly performing dozens of major works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann, as well as some works by Liszt (Dante Sonata, E Major Polonaise) which he had learned entirely on his own.
He had been studying piano intensively with Ernö Dohnányi, and theory with Max Fiedler, but in May 1915, what Ervin describes as the most important event in his life occurred: he "met" Liszt. The twenty-two year-old violinist Ferenc (Franz von) Vecsey, himself a veteran of a Carnegie Hall debut seven years earlier, was astonished to learn that the piano prodigy knew only a few of Liszts works, and was "not too much interested" in the master. "Dont you know Liszts Sonata?" "No." "Well, get it. You must become acquainted with it." Little suspecting the result, Mrs. Nyiregyházi bought the score for Ervin the next day. Upon wading through it, Ervin reacted in a way he still cannot describe adequately: "It was the deepest, most profound experience I ever had. I became illI got a fever."
The discovery of the Liszt Sonata changed his whole view of music and his life. There was an irresistible attraction, and from then on he considered Liszts works his lifes nourishing spiritual force. He made his mother get him all the available scores. He found the piano reductions of the orchestral works even more overwhelming than the piano pieces. During the next days he devoured whole volumes of Liszt, oblivious of the need for food or rest, often falling away from the piano delirious and feverish.
Mrs. Nyiregyházi and his teachers became alarmed by Ervins sudden change. He was no longer interested in anything but Liszt. Fiedler and Dohnányi, as well as Emil von Reznicek (with whom he had occasional lessons) tried in vain to discourage his obsession. Ervin, despite his respect for his teachers, defended Liszt against their slurs. The composers acceptance was then at its lowest critical ebb. Ervin remembers sadly that, though he did study Liszts B-minor Ballade, thirteenth Rhapsody and E-flat Concerto with Dohnányi, "at that time Dohnányi was against Liszt. Although he was a very kind, very generous man whose lessons were very inspiring, our relationship was strained because of Liszt. I was not allowed to neglect my studies of Hummel, Dussek, Czerny, Beethoven, Bachhe made me learn the whole Well-Tempered Clavier so that I could transpose any part of itand it was as if I was in prisonAlcatrazbecause I wanted only Liszt."
These lessons continued until 1916, when Dohnányi moved to Budapest. Ervin began a year of studies with the noted Scots pianist and Liszt pupil, Frederic Lamond. "Lamond, although he didnt play much of it In public, knew and loved Liszts music. He showed me the orchestral score of the Dante Symphony for the first time and played parts of it for me. I didnt study the Sonata with him, I played it for him. He said my rather slow tempos were the same as Liszts." Ervin did study the Valse Infernale, Hungarian Fantasia, Mazeppa, Paysage, Feux Follets and Harmonies du Soir with Lamond, as well as some Beethoven and Brahms. "His playing was very scholastic, but beautifulwhat he created was still a work of art. Scholasticism of such a type is admirable. In lesser hands it would have been intolerable." Ervin was twelve, and for the first time had a close personal relationship with a teacher, for he felt that Lamond liked him very much.
Mrs. Nyiregyházi became increasingly concerned that her sons obsession would ruin her plans, for who could make money from Liszt? In 1917 the family returned to Budapest and Ervin was sent back to Dohnányi. The two got on worse than ever.
Ervin became a defiant and taciturn adolescent who would not associate with others his own age unless they were, in his words "terribly unusual". He played the Liszt Sonata when he was supposed to be practicing his lessons (he always managed to complete them anyway). Other children made fun of his long hair"Mother thought it would be more profitable, since all prodigies had it." And then, Ervin had interests other than Liszt and the piano. He was brilliantly accomplished in philosophy, geography, history and chess, all of which fascinated him. At six he was already a talented defensive chess player, and by thirteen or so, had become so obsessed with it that he was considering devoting more time to it than to music. Upon friends recommendation, his mother took away his chess set. "I was very bitter," he said.
When Ervin was almost sixteen, his mother broke an umbrella over his head during the rage of an argument in the street. She wanted him to continue wearing short pants, which he refused to do. They fought often, and whenever Ervin could get enough money, he ran away from home. But he was extremely naive and not ready to be on his own: his mother, wanting him to remain a prodigy, went to great lengths to prevent him from growing up. Things quickly reached an intolerable state.
In September 1918, Ervin stopped studying. The next month he played the Liszt A-Major Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic under Arthur Nikisch, and in November was called to Oslo to play the Tchaikovsky First in place of Rachmaninoff, who had unexpectedly emigrated to America. The teenaged pianist created a sensation, and the Norwegian King and Queen attended his second performance. Mrs. Nyiregyházi arranged a tour of the neutral Scandinavian countries, and at one concert in Stockholm in l9l9, sixteen year-old Ervin performed Busonis monolithic concerto. "I love that tremendous work. Its the only concerto, except perhaps for the Brahms D-minor, which might tempt me into a performance with orchestra today."
During the extensive Scandinavian tour, Ervin was accepted as a mature concert artist. He turned seventeen and felt very adult, delivering an ultimatum to his mother: if she wanted him to continue playing concerts, they would have to live apart. Ervin then stayed with friends in Scandinavia, but his first extensive experience of being on his own was to come in America. He was engaged for his first U.S. appearances by the Wolfsohn Musical Bureau, which, with the Mason and Hamlin Company (the piano Ervin then played) began to generate advance publicity.
His American debut in Carnegie Hall on October 18, 1920, created another sensation. The long-haired pianist was acclaimed by public and critics alike. The dean of New York critics, W. J. Henderson, praised him eloquently in the Herald, while H.E. Krehbiel of the Tribune wrote: "Last night we were bidden to Carnegie Hall to hear a genius... It is long since we heard the like. When one heard the rippling that his left hand evoked in the music of the Bach-Busoni Toccata, we were sure there sat before us an unsurpassed master of polyphonic playing." The Evening Posts Henry Finck noted that "the dash of his playing often carries away the listener." The Evening Journal said he was "a l7 year-old Paderewski...the sensation of the season," while the Timess Richard Aldrich proclaimed his "brilliant technical equipment, great strength, remarkable dexterity [and] fine feeling for piano tone." The Musical Courier was poetic in its review: "He can thunder, he can whisper and he can woo the keys too, producing a singing tone of ravishing beauty." The musical public suddenly focused on this new phenomenon, and Ervin had to play two more recitals on October 30th and November 7th to satisfy public demand for tickets. At these the audiences were more enthusiastic than ever, and the critics outdid themselves to describe Ervins playing. Although the great Ossip Gabrilowitsch, long a New York favorite, was playing in Aeolian Hall on October 30th, the majority of the local piano enthusiasts was at Carnegie. Ervin was the sensation of the season.
After the three recitals, critics
continued to pour out their opinions about this strange, new piano
playing. Musical Courier observed that "there is a power in his
tone quite out of keeping with the impression the slender figure makes."
Musical America wrote:
"There is something uncannily gigantic
about Nyiregyhazi... even in these days of super-pianists."
It was the overpowering individuality of Ervins conceptions that astonished most people, even more than his incredible pianistic facility. But some reviewers were unprepared for his unique ideas. In many works, especially by Liszt and Scriabin, Ervins interpretations were irresistible; but with Chopin, Brahms, Debussy and others, his individuality and disregard for current musical convention were puzzling. Some criticized his conceptions, rhythm and dynamics as irrational, erratic and eccentric. His tempos were often unusually slow, and those unwilling to understand him accused him of sentimentalizing the music of the masters. But these critical reservations hardly mattered to the public. Ervin had been accepted into the pantheon of great pianists.
He apparently succeeded in communicating his obsession with Liszt to those New York audiences of the early l920s. Ervin mesmerized listeners as perhaps only Liszt himself had done before. Liszt, Liszt, the name Liszt was in the air. Widespread rumors had it that Nyiregyházi was the very reincarnation of Liszt. Who else but Liszt himself could embody such personal and spiritual conceptions? What other personality so perfectly suited this particular composers style? Could there be any pianist other than Liszt capable of such miracles of natural pianism?
The gifted and industrious "piano journalist" Harriet Brower was granted the first American interview with the pianist for Musical America. Much of the allotted space was devoted to a picture of Ervin with his Liszt-like hair. The interview portion was somewhat brief, for Ervin, though fluent in Hungarian, German, French and Norwegian, was probably reluctant to speak much English, even though he understood it well.
If we apply Miss Browers contemporary description of his playing to that on this record, it would seem that his style has changed little throughout the years. The article, which appeared on December 11, 1920, read in part:
...pianists familiar to concert stages were there in abundance ... would he prove a new Liszt, or some upstart? ... the vision of Liszt ... must have been uppermost in the mind of every sympathetic listener. Or if not then, at the first mosnent it must have been suggested as soon as the youth began to play ... from whence came the power to produce such orchestral volume of sound? Those long, slender fingers seemed tipped with fire and flame as they made the keyboard throb and ring. Yet they could draw forth tones of melting tenderness as well - a revelation of organ-like sonority coupled with a certain naive gentleness ... filled with poetry, changing lights and shadows ... scale passages, where every degree of tone color and quality of touch were observed, from the unusually brilliant, bell-like quality in forceful passages, to the softest pianissimo ... exquisite in tender moods ... [the] Liszt was aristocratic, capricious and demoniacal ... filled with the spirit of youth ... easily and spontaneously the stream of sound poured forth ... no seeming effort, no unpleasant mannerisms ... straight as an arrow he sat, with upturned head, scarcely glancing at the keys, wholly lost in the mazes of his own tone weaving--an appealing figure, a piano genius... Face to face with this pianistic wonder, one finds a young creature of simple, unaffected personality ... The appeal made by this young piano virtuoso is strong to those who can read between the lines ... he will conquer as he pursues his artistic way even in a seaon bristling with piano virtuosi.
Perhaps the most astonishing part of the article is a quote from Ervin:
You ask about my technical studies. I never do any and never did ... As for scales, all I ever had to do was learn the fingering, then the rest was easy; I could do them... How do I memorize? I just play the piece through a couple of times, then I know the notes ... I do not forget.
Success in America was so great that the pianist decided to live in New York. Almost immediately his fortunes began to wane. Liszts musical style was by no means universally accepted in 1920, and Ervins association with Liszts music was not entirely beneficial to a career. There were other problems, including disagreements with the not always idealistic policies of the Wolfsohn Bureau. People made fun of Ervins hair, and even more humiliating, the man hired to act as guide and guardian for the naive young man, a certain pianist named von Laurenz, gave a sensationalist interview to the World Magazine in which he described Ervin as the most incompetent man in New York. He has learned to do literally nothing save play the piano. ... he took up a new big concerto the other day. . . and memorized it at one playing. But I dont think I shall ever succeed in teaching him how to put a pair of cuff buttons in his sleeves.
Ervin decided to make some changes, and after that first American season he joined the roster of manager R.E. Johnston, changed to the Knabe piano and cut his hair, For the debut Wolfsohn had changed the spelling of his name to Nyredgházi to make it more pronounceable to Americans. Now Ervin was allowed to spell his last name correctly, but was forced to Germanize his first to Erwin.
1921 saw three further Nyiregyházi concerts in Carnegie Hall, for which Ervin, bewildered by someof the previous seasons criticisms, apparently tried to temper his playing. But the Herald Tribune wrote that he has not discovered why he is not entirely satisfactory to public taste. He played certain classics more cautiously, not always with happy results. The same critic noted, however, that the audience apparently approved of everything he did, no matter how he did it.
Ervin had his greatest American success in Boston, when he played the Liszt A-Major Concerto with the Boston Symphony under Pierre Monteux on October 14, 1921. Olin Downes wrote in the Boston Post that he had played with as beautiful a singing tone, as noble and poetic a concept ... as any pianist this writer ever heard. Downes was aware of the New York criticisms of Ervins style, and obviously thought them unfair:
[He is] a young man, mostly arms and legs, with fingers so long that they made his sleeves seem too short and gave the effect of two fans when he spread his hands over the keyboard. His rhythm, however capricious the rhythmic changes might seem, was never at fault. The orchestra rested on it and Mr. Monteux reveled in it ... His understanding of the structure of the rhapsodic, virtuoso piece was so sympathetic and so clear that it had an unprecedented unity of effect ... The crowning fact was an interpretation all poetry, imagination, fire-youth ... his art is not only temperamental, it is reflective. Above all he has the white heat of sincerity and conviction and faith ... His triumph yesterday was complete.
For the second year, generally good reviews were coupled with problems. Ervin was unhappy that his new manager presented him as an assisting artist in recitals by Titta Ruffo, Rosa Ponselle, Anna Fitziu and other singers, and seemed to devote most of his time to other clients. Treating Ervin more like a child than an artist and hating Germans because of the war, he even refused to let Ervin play Brahms in public.
In November 1922 in Boston, Ervin heard Paderewski for the first time. The grandeur of the Poles conceptions impressed him more than any other pianist."His Liszt and Appassionata Sonatas were tremendous, unforgettable. It shook me heart and soul, His performances had emotional intensity, great dramatic power. He was not a technician, but it did not matter. Nyiregyházi says Paderewski was the only pianist who ever directly influenced his playing.
He played under Johnstons management through 1925, but soon his whole career dissolved. Johnston refused to present Ervin at the fees he had contracted. In an action unusual for an artist, Ervin sued. The inexperienced pianist hired a lawyer unequal to his task, and lost the suit. Because of a great deal of adverse publicity, no other manager would agree to represent him. Like most artists, he was incapable of handling his own career. Deprived by managers of their help, he was virtually unable by 1925 to perform under the auspices of any major musical organization. The musical public has a notoriously short memory: Ervin was soon forgotten, for he no longer played in public. As enormous as his talent and public acceptance were, he was too impractical a man to be able to organize his career without the help of the managers who now shunned him.
Ervins inability to cope with the vicissitudes of life still makes him completely vulnerable to such blows. I can only assume he was even more defenseless fifty years ago when he lost his only avenue of income. I got into a financial mess. I became destitute and had to sleep on the subway all nightthe shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central. Sometimes things were so bad I didnt even have the nickel fare. He was totally resourceless, living in abject poverty, and all his artistry seemed to count for nought.
Ervin needed help, and mistakenly thought it might come from a woman he met in 1926. Mrs. Mary Kelen offered to manage his career, provide him with shelter, food, clothing and a piano. She said she would invest $50,000 in his career. All he had to do was sign a contract guaranteeing her 25% of his earnings and a return (with interest) of the money she would advance to pay his keep. There was one catch, of course: this was to be a marriage contract. He succumbed to her coercion only five days after their first meeting, and at twenty-three Ervin married the thirty-four year-old woman on October 5, 1926.
During the term of this contract Ervin played exactly one recital, in Aeolian Hall. Reviewers noted that he had integrated a more restrained approach in his playing, retaining his unique virility, and that his ebullient performances took the audience by storm." Nyiregyházi himself singles out his playing on that occasion of the Beethoven Op. 110 Sonata and Liszt Tarantella and Don Juan Fantasy as among the greatest performances of his career.
Only a year later, however, according to an article in the Daily News of October 28, 1927, Ervin was asked to detail the story of his contract with Mary Kelen for a sworn affidavit submitted upon his wifes suit for divorce: four days after he met Mary Kelen, she told him that unless he married her, he couldnt visit her at her home... I had no money but begged for two weeks to think it over. She gave me one day. The next day we went to the Municipal Building and she filled out the marriage license application. There I learned she had been married three times before... Dont worry, she said. Ill explain to you later, and she patted my hand. She became domineering and abusive and I signed. A year and three days after the wedding she attacked him with a kitchen knife and he escaped to the home of a friend, the author Theodore Dreiser. During the marriage she had often treated Ervin like a slave, even kicking and slapping him. Despite all this, Ervin retained the highest regard for the institution of marriage, as we shall see.
After the divorce, Ervin decided to try his luck in California. He got a job with Hugo Riesenfeld at United Artists, where he had to play at sight any new fully-orchestrated scores brought into the office. It required a sight-reading ability such as few musicians in history possessed, and Ervin made a good wage. He saved his money, quit his job, and went back to Europe in 1930, to play in Budapest, Vienna and Holland. Again, he was very well received, although his style still did not please the conservatives.
Throughout the 'thirties Nyiregyházi drifted from the East to the West Coast, to Europe, and back again. He eked out a living, trying in vain to resume his career. He had a few European engagements (1934 in the Budapest home of the violinist Jenö Hubay, 1938 in Oslo), a few recitals in Hungarian-American communities, and some W.P.A. work playing pieces like Colin O'Day McPherson's Suite "Deserted Garden" with Modeste Altschler and the Los Angeles Federal Symphony Orchesetra. He married several more times. He returned finally to Los Angeles, to remain for twenty years. The impractical artist has always been extravagant both emotionally and financially, a characteristic that has enriched his performances and complicated his life. "I was idealistic and would go to the Ritz Carlton for a superb lunch as soon as I had five dollars. I loved luxury, although I was the Count of No-Account. And in those days five dollars was a lot of money!" But for most of the time Ervin has lived in very straitened circumstances.
Nyiregyházi has been associated with some of the most fascinating personalities but disdains the thought of ever writing an autobiography. At least one of his reminiscences is tantalizing, for he told me once that the publisher Rudolph Schirmer had made an acetate recording in 1938 in the home of Gloria Swanson of his performance of Liszt's Jeux d'eaux. Schirmer presented the record to the actress but today it can't be found.
Nyiregyházi returned to Europe in 1959 for a few concerts, but since then he has rarely ventured to play in public. By the end of the thirties, Ervin had lost interest in having a career. The piano could provide a living, but he knew he was innately incapable of leading the virtuoso's life. He became more interested in other things, and for more than forty years has spent most of his time reading, studying Liszt and composing. A catalogue of his own compositions, if ever compiled, would number more than seven hundred works. Recently he told me "My love of music is unlimited, but my interest now in having a concert career is not very great. The attendant difficulties are too harsh. If it had been handed to me on a golden platter, I probably would have gone ahead with it. I am too idealistic to prevail in the grubby world of musical commerce."
Over the years Nyiregyházi's life became unimaginably complicated. He became more embroiled than ever in problems of conjugal responsibility, and each time had married, he felt it his foremost duty to support his wife. "It was very difficult---I could hardly support myself. It was so hard, but I was in love and a man in love is not reasonable." He told me he wold not compromise the reputation of any woman he loved. By the time I met him he had been married nine times, probing just how idealistic, uncompromising and extravagant he really is, and how unusual his view of compromise is! Elsie Swan, ten years his senior, had helped him long ago. Now he learned that she was in great need herself, bedridden and about to be institutionalized, with no family to help her. Ervin married her in 1972 to take care of her, though by his own account he couldn't even boil water. Gratitude became love, and in 1973 he told me he loved Elsie "even more than I love Liszt."
It was this love that compelled the great pianist to give a few recitals, "managed" by some followers on the West Coast. The recital Terry McNeill wandered into in San Francisco was one of these. Nyiregyházi allowed himself to undergo these nervous ordeals only because he urgently needed money for Elsie's medical care.
An advance against royalties for Mr. Nyiregyházi was included in the grant of a benevolent foundation, which kindly funded some of I.P.A.'s costs for this recording. I corresponded with the pianist about repertoire from February to September, 1974. He was eager to have the taped performances of the two Liszt Legendes included in his first record, for he felt they were supreme examples of his recent work. He said he felt he had at last been able to do those compositions justice, and would not be persuaded to perform them ever again. We agreed that he would record Liszt's B-minor Ballade for the other side of the disc.
I knew that this great pianist had not owned even a piano for decades. The University of Southern California's music department kindly let him use a piano, and I later learned the Mr. Nyiregyházi practiced all of ten or eleven hours there during the few weeks before the recording date.
At that session he lost all confidence when I quite insensitively opened a score of the Ballade and followed it right in front of him while he played. He did not know the ways of recording sessions, and could not have known that producers mark the score at spots which might need retakes. He had been criticized so often for "taking liberties with the score" that he thought I was following him to make sure he didn't change things. Of course he did change things---playing one hand before the other, altering rhythms and doubling octaves---and not by intellectual design, but by feeling the music as he played. And I could not have cared less if he did change thing in the score, but my thoughtless act only made the session even more difficult for him.
The great pianist's hands shook noticeably throughout the session. He closed his eyes as if in a trance; it seemed as if he had self-protectively withdrawn into a "piano world" of sound greater than himself. Retakes were hardly necessary, for Nyiregyházi's hands became sure as they touched the keys, shaking once again whenever they left them.
Elsie Nyiregyházi died just a few months after that session. He has not played since.
Ervin Nyiregyházi's personality and style developed at the end of an age of musical subjectivity, and he has lived on through the most rigid age of objectivity, becoming a monument to past viewpoints and vanished ideals. Today many listeners simply cannot feel or understand the emotions captured in the works of the great Romantic composers. They seem to respond easily only to the incidental forms adopted by these composers, and Nyiregyházi will not be the pianist for them. But for the rest of us, his preternaturally lyrical singing tone, unbelievable sense of grandeur, superhuman tonal control, incredibly wide dynamic range and completely idiosyncratic way of playing communicate directly from the greatest piano composers of the past.
--GREGOR BENKO
New York, Fall, 1976