An american journalist was asking to the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard why there are so many geniuses in mathematics and physics coming from Hungary to the US... This was at some times after the Manhattan project...
Szilard answered: "Which geniuses? There is only one genius from Hungary it is Janos Von Neumann".
That says a lot about Hungarian soul...And after the long list of Hungarian genius in america, that says a lot about Von Neumann...
For me the greatest pianist i ever heard in my life is a Hungarian...He towered so high that it is unbelievable...
Listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLk6vqaxU1YCompare this version with Horowitz and Richter for example...The tempo of the Hungarian god is very slow but is more intense and explosive than the other 2 giants...The emotional flow is so powerful that it is impossible to not enter in a transe listening it...Try it...
The volcanic power of the lava flows break all walls and any other pianist sound like first class prize pupils practicing ...
This amazing pianist was considered Liszt reincarnated when very young and a book was written about him by a greal psychologist in Holland when the boy has 13 years of age...The book was about transcendental musical genius among children...
He live unrecognized in America except for the first 15years, after that without any imporesario, poor, and witout any ressources he dive in misery, near prostitutes, composing his own works all day without a piano for himself most of his life...
He make no public appearance for 35 years except at 74 years, when his 10th wife, sicked by cancer he was in need of money to cure her...
The journalist making an interview with him in the cardboard pocket of this vinyl ask him why there is no piano in his appartment; he answered " no garagist keep their tools in their house"...He does not need a piano and NEVER practice...
For those of you who may think that i have exagerated a bit about his playing listen to this, written in the US by Shoenberg, the great composer for which any pianist is mainly only a tool for his genius, in a letter to the young Maestro Klemperer in Germany:
In a 1935 letter to Otto Klemperer, Arnold Schoenberg wrote the following about him:
...a pianist who appears to be something really quite extraordinary. I had to overcome great resistance in order to go at all, for the description I’d heard from Dr. Hoffmann and from Maurice Zam had made me very skeptical. But I must say that I have never heard such a pianist before...First, he does not play at all in the style you and I strive for. And just as I did not judge him on that basis, I imagine that when you hear him, you too will be compelled to ignore all matters of principle, and probably will end up doing just as I did. For your principles would not be the proper standard to apply. What he plays is expression in the older sense of the word, nothing else; but such power of expression I have never heard before. You will disagree with his tempis as much as I did. You will also note that he often seems to give primacy to sharp contrasts at the expense of form, the latter appearing to get lost. I say appearing to; for then, in its own way, his music surprisingly regains its form, makes sense, establishes its own boundaries. The sound he brings out of the piano is unheard of, or at least I have never heard anything like it. He himself seems not to know how he produces these novel and quite incredible sounds – although he appears to be a man of intelligence and not just some flaccid dreamer. And such fullness of tone, achieved without ever becoming rough, I have never before encountered. For me, and probably for you too, it’s really too much fullness, but as a whole it displays incredible novelty and persuasiveness. And above all he’s only [sc. 33 years] old, so he’s still got several stages of development before him, from which one may expect great things, given his point of departure... it is amazing what he plays and how he plays it. One never senses that it is difficult, that it is technique – no, it is simply a power of the will, capable of soaring over all imaginable difficulties in the realization of an idea. – You see, I’m waxing almost poetic.[9] Wiki
«We also have the testimony of Arnold Schoenberg. Arnold Schoenberg was not a man to suffer fools greatly. Nevertheless, the letter in which he wrote to Klemperer, Schoenberg lavishes praise on this pianist just about unlike any musician he had before encountered. Schoenberg’s own students were sometimes victims of their master’s caustic comments. He did not bestow praise lightly on anyone. However, he seems to be absolutely captivated by Nyiregyházi and his playing.» part of an article on the net....
To finish my post about this pianist i will give you this anecdote:
Earl Wild was a first class extraordinary pianist... It is easy to verify with his career spanning almost a century, his playing is so powerful technically and musically, probably no one with a great name never ever could impress him so to make him doubt of himself... With reason, Earl Wild is anything except a second grade pianist , it is one among the giants...
But what is happening, what happened when a giant encounter, by luck or fate, a god?
An american journalist asked Earl Wild after a public concert what do you think of the playing of this unknown Hungarian genius which just recorded a disc for the first time since 30 or 40 years... Earl Wild answered about the playing of the Hungarian, was one short word: " baloney"...
Think a second how the giant pianist was feeling about himself compared to the unknown god; for the first time in his life probably he was listening to something he cannot emulate or mimic not even rival and never surpass even in dream....
It is not unlike the jealousy and anger of Salieri toward Mozart in the great epic scene of this great but fictitious film "Amadeus"....
If you want to verify compare his playing on youtube with anyone.... At worst and it is rare he seems on par with some giant for some piece, most of the times the god in healthy form crush giants like children... No one except the extraterrestrial octopus musical virtuoso Simon Barrere rival him, and perhaps in Scriabin only tough, not in Liszt, the 3 russian gods, Sofronitsky and Heinrich Neuhaus with Scriabin himself and very very few others rival him...
