From Publishers Weekly
Ervin Nyiregyházi (1903–1987) dazzled concert audiences in the early 20th century with his volcanic performances, playing so intensely that his fingers bled on the keys. Alas, his keyboard virtuosity was drowned out by a discordant symphony of neuroses. Unable even to tie his shoes properly, Nyiregyházi, who was born in Budapest, Hungary, and settled in L.A., wrestled with crippling stage fright; drank and womanized compulsively (his seventh wife was a prostitute he met six days before marrying her in Vegas); exhausted others with his neediness, paranoia and grandiose posturing; and sabotaged a potentially brilliant career in the name of artistic purity. Bazzana, biographer of eccentric pianist Glenn Gould, follows Nyiregyházi's life from early acclaim through decades of poverty, obscurity and debauchery to his brief, celebrated comeback in the 1970s as the skid row pianist. Although Bazzana can be reductionist—he diagnoses Nyiregyházi with borderline personality disorder brought on by a domineering stage mother—he tells this lurid story sympathetically, without excusing Nyiregyházi's excesses. Even better, he writes about his subject's music in a lucid and evocative way. A tormented, self-destructive artist and the creator of thrilling, emotionally supercharged music, Nyiregyházi is, in Bazzana's compelling portrait, a study in the upside and downside of romanticism. Photos. (Sept. 17)
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
From The New Yorker
Bazzana, the author of an incisive study of Glenn Gould, follows up with the extraordinary story of a pianist much less famous but even more eccentric, Ervin Nyiregyházi. Born in Budapest in 1903, he was a prodigy whose early life was a series of effortless triumphs. But, after he moved to America, his career quickly foundered, thanks to unscrupulous managers and his own immense stubbornness. He slept rough in New York and, later, lived in seedy hotels in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Nyiregyházi, who called himself "a fortissimo bastard" and claimed to be "addicted to Liszt, oral sex, and alcohol," married ten times and had countless other conquests (including, probably, Gloria Swanson). Rediscovered late in life, he made recordings that are controversial: his interpretations were distinctive but his technique was shaky. Bazzana painstakingly re-creates a life lived mostly in obscurity and judiciously separates greatness from vainglory. The result is a balanced portrait that also often reads like a parable about the artistic temperament.
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Copyright © 2007 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
