Ervin Nyiregyházi (piano)
Live Volume 2: Forest Hill Clubhouse 1973 and Last Recordings 1984
rec. May 24, 1973 at the Forest Hill Clubhouse, San Francisco, California, (Disc 1); October 1984 at Ricardo Hernandez’s house, San Francisco, California (Disc 2)
SONETTO CLASSICS SONCLA005 [72:44 + 39:02]
Some years ago I wrote about Music & Arts’s Nyiregyházi release, a 2-CD album that covered live recordings made over the period 1972-82 (see review). I’d refer you there for consideration of some of the performances that are common to that, and this recent release. The pianist, about whom Kevin Bazzana has written a full and astonishing biography called Lost Genius; The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick – Bazzana’s notes for this new release largely revisit those he wrote for Music & Arts – is an extreme example of a thoroughly derailed musical career, and I briefly alluded to some of these elements in that previous review. Pianists seem especially susceptible to psychobiography but when accompanied by the kind of salaciousness that sometimes seems attached to Nyiregyházi, one can lose sight of the pianist. That’s not the case with dedicated releases such as this, in which the ten wives, and the destitution, are acknowledged and confronted, but so too is a frank awareness of the pianist’s frailties and imperfections, inevitable consequences of his having abandoned the piano for so many years and simply not having practised at all. It’s important to note, of course, that these are not studio recordings.
Sonetto Classics’ own twofer covers some of the same musical ground as that previous release in that it too presents performances given in 1973 at Forest Hill Clubhouse, San Francisco. There is considerable overlap; the two Debussy pieces, the Tchaikovsky, Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata, and the Grieg are all common to both releases. The difference lies in the sound quality. Sonneto has access to the original master recording of the 1973 concert, which Music & Arts did not, and this has been transferred digitally (it’s in stereo) at 24bit at Abbey Road studios. The original acoustic is, clearly, nothing special, as the room was small and rather boxy but it was hardly a studio in the first place and the advantage of the original tapes and the remastering are audible; increases in colour, refinement, definition and resonance.
I won’t reprise my comments on those performances common to both but will add a few words about the other pieces. Liszt was at the forefront of his repertoire. It’s not merely a pianistic affinity but a kind of spiritual connection and he chose with discrimination works that seemed to forge some bond between composer and his pianist conduit. Thus, we have Sunt lacrymae rerum: En mode hongrois and La lugubre gondola, works that prize brooding intensity over rhetorical virtuosity, the kind of virtuosity that Nyiregyházi was now, in any case, incapable. Prioritising melancholy and darkness draws from him the starkness that envelops the music and the imperfection of his playing is itself an index of a kind of heroism. It is this end of things that he must have sought in the selection of Brahms’ Rhapsody in E flat major, Op.119/4, his last piano work. The massive sonorities he sculpts, the cataclysm that generates so pulverising a drama, are accompanied by blistering inaccuracy after inaccuracy, until the music itself becomes seemingly incidental to the sheer act of musical existence. In addition to Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata, on the M & A CD, he also played the Počme tragique Op.34 with greater control and an implicit awareness of the gravity of the music; truly, in his case, in darkness let me dwell.
This was his last public American concert though he continued to play privately for friends. The short second disc of 39 minutes presents one such occasion. At a battered and out of tune piano, recorded distantly on a cassette, at a friend’s house, we hear more Liszt. Aux cyprčs de la Villa d’Este: Thrénodie (II) starts at bar 28 but even so stretches out for 16 minutes. No one seems to know what edition he used in the 23-minute Christus: Part 1, “Weihnachts-Oratorium”/No. 4, “Hirtengesang an der Krippe. Both performances, in any case, reflect the quixotic improvisatory element that was also a part of his musicianship. After all, he did record an LP called Ervin Nyiregyházi at the Opera; Ervin Nyiregyházi plays and improvises six operatic paraphrases. These two late Liszt performances still show that he was capable of volcanic sonorities and a vast range of colours – there are also moments of transcendental beauty - but they are not accompanied by much in the way of technique.
This twofer comes with that splendidly comprehensive booklet but also with an additional booklet sized Nyiregyházi in Japan, 1982 which has black and white photos taken by Hatano Yoshimasa. These come with droll quotations from the pianist; ‘other pianists play the right notes the wrong way! I play the wrong notes the right way!” being one of the best though ‘alcohol made me happier than giving concerts’ takes one back to the darker realities of his life. Not every pianist would say of himself; ‘I am a fortissimo bastard’ but he, of course, did.
This is a dedicated and utterly professional undertaking. It’s not for the faint of pianistic heart.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
CD 1 Forest Hill Clubhouse, San Francisco, 1973 (remastered from the original tape)
Liszt: “Sunt lacrymae rerum: En mode hongrois”
Liszt: La lugubre gondola (Dritter Elegie), second version
Brahms: Clavierstücke, Op. 119: No. 4, Rhapsody in E-flat Major
Debussy : Estampes: No. 1, “Pagodes”
Debussy : La plus que lente: Valse
Liszt : Années de pčlerinage, troisičme année: No. 6, “Marche funčbre: En mémoire de Maximilien I, Empereur du Mexique"
Tchaikovsky : Valse in A-flat Major , Op. 40: No. 8
Scriabin : Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp Major, Op. 30, I, Andante.
Scriabin : Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp Major, Op. 30, II, Prestissimo volando.
Grieg : Lyrische Stücke, Vol. 5, Op. 54: No. 4, “Notturno” in C Major.
Scriabin: Počme tragique in B-flat Major, Op. 34
CD 2 Private recordings, San Francisco, 1984 (remastered from the original tape)
Liszt : Années de pčlerinage, troisičme année: No. 3, “Aux cyprčs de la Villa d’Este: Thrénodie (II).”
Liszt : Christus: Part 1, “Weihnachts-Oratorium”/No. 4, “Hirtengesang an der Krippe.”
