Ervin Nyiregyhazi, Pianist

Biography

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Los Angeles Times
Obituary

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New York Times
Obituary

Nyiregyhazi, Ervin (Geza Revesz' book says Erwin)
Born January 19, 1903, Budapest, Hungary
Hungarian-American pianist, died 8 Apr 1987, at 84, in Los Angeles
Buried April 17, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, CA
Eulogy by Neil Levenson
Obituary Citations
Musical Times, 6/87: 346
New York Times, 4/16/87
Dictionary Citations
Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1984 and after, 7th edition unless otherwise specified),
Claghorn, Charles E. Biographical Dictionary of Jazz (1982),
The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (1986),
Kinkle, Roger D. The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz 1900-1950 (1974)
Information from 1988 M.L.A. Obituary Index
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/music/mla/necrology/
entries/1987/mainindx/0080.html
As a little boy, his parents had servants cut his food and place it in his mouth so he could keep his attention on less mundane matters.
Some people claimed he was the literal reincarnation of Liszt.
As an adult, he demonstrated a questionable ability to care for himself. At times he was so poor (largely through mismanagement of his money) that he was reduced to sleeping on subways.
He was married ten times. Last wife named Doris.
As "Pianist X," he sometimes wore a leather mask in performance. Pianos would suffer under his onslaught, and the pianos he chose to play on often had as many nervous tics as the pianist did (a parallel with Glenn Gould).
For decades before this recording was made, Nyiregyhazi did not own a piano, or even practice on one.
Perhaps the reader will not be surprised to hear that the two men whom Nyiregyhazi idolized the most were Franz Liszt and Oscar Wilde.

EULOGY DELIVERED AT MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR ERVIN NYIREGYHAZI 4/17/87

We are here to honor a very special man. Ervin's calling, what the Lord put him here to do, was music. Some of the critics and newspapers talk about details of Ervin's career as a pianist. They really miss the point entirely.

Last night I was listening to a recording of Ervin's paraphrase from Wagner's Lohengrin, and I noticed half way through that there are tears in my eyes. Those who knew him, and I include myself and his other acquaintances, and his wife, Doris, we are lonely. We do feel something, as if the world is a little different place now. But last night I was not mourning our friend. I feel he has gone someplace better. He is, right now at this moment, reaping the fruits of his lifelong honesty.

I was emotional listening to his music because music is that peculiar medium that reflects the whole person. Ervin was so remarkably honest that one hears this quality immediately in his music-making. He was not afraid of emotion, and so, when he made music he did not hide the emotion. I am a music critic in the mid-1980's when so much of our society is mechanized, at a time when we have erected so many barriers between people, and between ourselves and our emotions. And here is this remarkable man, who we are honoring today, who could be so utterly true to himself in this mechanized age. I think that we have to recognize his courage.

So much energy, and so much music bubbling inside him, more energy in some ways than all of us here put together have. And yet he had the courage, for' a very long life, never to diminish the contrasts. I think that I was reacting last night to Ervin's courage. If those of us who knew him ask ourselves why it was that we were so drawn to him, I would say that one reason is that some of us were ennobled by his courage.

You know, in yesterday's New York Times they spoke about Ervin on page 22 and on page one they have something about Amy Carter. I think Ervin would have been somehow content with page 22. I never knew him to seek fame. I never knew him to want to compromise himself in the least little bit for any materialistic end. You cannot really mix materialism and music, and retain purity in the music; much in the same way spirituality and materialism do not mix very well. Stravinsky once said of himself that he was the vessel through which his music passed. Ervin had this same highly spiritual attitude about himself. He was at pains to diminish himself. He knew instinctively that to build up Ervin Nyiregyhazi was to violate the gift he'd been given.

And yet he knew very well on an intellectual level that his gifts were enormous. He was, in the truest sense, a child prodigy. He was studied by the Amsterdam Psychological Laboratory as a child. And the resulting book, The Psychology of a Musical Prodigy, published in 1925, is still a standard textbook on the subject. Ervin was both composing music and playing the piano at an age when most of us might have been playing in a sandbox. At the age of eight he was playing the piano for royalty.

At age 17, in !920, he gave his debut concert in Carnegie Hall. This was one of the three facets of Ervin's endeavors as a musician. Through the 1920's and the i930's, he gave music to people through his performances. You read the commentaries from that era -- from critics, and from friends, and from musicians who heard Ervin play, and you see they were groping for words to describe what they were hearing. What Ervin was giving them transcended in meaning any words that might be used as a description.

It is very natural to me that Ervin ceased participating in the concert scene in the 1930's. The business of music, the promotions and the selling of tickets and all that, really has little to do with music -it's usually salesmanship and marketing. Ervin had limited tolerance for these facades. He turned his back on the system because the system refuse~ to treat him as a pure musician but rather simply had to market him.

Since the age of 12, Ervin consistently felt an overpowering identification with the music of Franz Liszt. Liszt was a very spiritual man. Through the historical caricatures, we have this image of Liszt as a matinee idol. But Liszt actually gave up his performing career out of an idealism, which like Ervin's idealism lacked hypocrisy. Liszt felt cheapened and debased, probably embarrassed, and just gave up public performance as a pianist. Liszt composed music for the ensuing 40 years of his life and tried to pass on what he knew to others. Liszt was a benevolent man who at the same time lived a very full life. It is not difficult to imagine that Ervin felt such an identification with this giant of the 19th century

So Ervin, like Liszt, gave up public performance. With his compositions, Liszt said he was throwing a spear into the future. Ervin, in this facet of his endeavors, has done likewise. Through his life Ervin composed many, many hundreds of compositions. These are Ervin's gifts to the future. All during his life he composed. Ervin didn't do this for himself. He did it for us and for our children.

In keeping with the unusual character of his life, Ervin did receive unexpected and sudden fame in the late 1970's. Through a series of coincidences his first record was released -- when Ervin was 75 years old -- of Ervin performing the music of Liszt. Several other recordings followed in close succession. Ervin was all of the sudden in the public eye -and quite understandably, because whoever heard these records knew that some elemental force was at work. This was piano-playing the likes of which constitute a legend. Just as had happened with Liszt, the
collectivity focused mainly on biographical details. There were television reports and multiple magazine and newspaper stories.

It was at this time that I became aware of Ervin and traveled to San Francisco, where he was then living, to meet him. I had trepidation because after hearing the enormous range and scope of his piano-playing I wasn't sure what sort of person I would meet on a personal level.

I met a chivalrous, aristocratic, courteous gentleman, a gentleman in the sense of being courteous, but also gentle in the sense of having a gentle soul. Ervin's vicissitudes had given him the greatest possible empathy. Ail who knew him must have felt from Ervin his gentleness and his empathy.

Psalm 37 begins: Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

I could get Ervin to talk about music, to talk about Liszt, to talk about philosophy, but about his vicissitudes he generally managed a smile and a look which seemed to say so what. He had good words to say about the wealthier and most famous pianists.

Later in this Psalm 37 we read: The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord l Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him.

Ervin would want me at this time to pay tribute to Doris Nyiregyhazi, for almost nine years Ervin's loving wife. Doris supported him, held his hand, nursed him, and gave him a special serenity and comfort during these last years.

We were blessed by Ervin's presence. We are grateful for the rich memories of him through his personality, and through his music. He lives on in our hearts. And he lives on through his music.