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Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy
Born in Budapest in 1903, Ervin Nyiregyházi (nyeer-edge-hah-zee) was composing at two, giving his first public recital at six, and performing all over Europe by eight. He was soon recognized as one of the most remarkable child prodigies in history and became the subject of a four-year study by a psychologist. By twenty-five, he had all but disappeared. Mismanaged, exploited, and insistent on an intensely Romantic style, his career foundered in adulthood and he was reduced to penury. In 1928, he settled in Los Angeles, where he performed sporadically and worked in Hollywood. Psychologically, he remained a child, and found the ordinary demands of daily life onerous — he struggled even to dress himself. He drank heavily, was insatiable sexually (he married ten times), and lived in abject poverty, yet such was his talent and charisma that he numbered among his friends and champions Rudolph Valentino, Harry Houdini, Theodore Dreiser, Bela Lugosi, and Gloria Swanson. Rediscovered in the 1970s, he enjoyed a sensational and controversial renaissance. Kevin Bazzana explores the brilliant but troubled mind of a geniune Romantic adrift in the modern age. The story he tells is one of the most fascinating - and bizarre - in the history of music.
- GenresNonfictionMusicBiography
384 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 9, 2025
Lost Genius, by Kevin Bazzana, is a biography of pianist Ervin Nyiregyházi.
Ever hear of him? Probably not.
You may know the names Vladimir Horowitz, Van Cliburn, and other 20th Century pianistic titans. But Nyiregyházi?
Whether Nyiregyházi even belongs in the class of pianistic titans is debatable. And it has been debated, ever since he re-emerged in the early 1970s after decades of obscurity. Lost Genius argues that yes, he does belong.
A lot was written about Nyiregyházi in the 1970s. A lot was written about him in the 1920s, too. In between? Mostly silence.
As a child prodigy born in Budapest, Nyiregyházi was compared favorably to Mozart. He seemed to master music effortlessly. He began composing his own stuff at four or five and played before heads of state and other dignitaries throughout Europe. A shrink wrote a book about him, and he was generally lauded as the Next Big Thing.
Nyiregyházi debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1920 when he was just seventeen. But he was difficult to work with and alienated the musical establishment, and it killed his career.
Or did it? “More plausibly, perhaps it was his unorthodox, limited, self-indulgent repertoire,” wrote a critic in 1979, in reviewing a new Nyiregyházi album. Another reviewer dismissed him thusly: “For those wishing to explore skid row pianism, this album is recommended.”
Yet his style of playing excited many listeners, too. It has been described as “a free and intense ‘grand manner’ that goes back to the heyday of Romanticism as exemplified by Liszt himself – and that has come to be regarded with suspicion and/or derision in our antiseptic age.” Nyiregyházi put it this way: “The more gushing, the better.”
In any case, Nyiregyházi was basically washed up by his mid-twenties. But he liked the United States and stayed here, spending most of the next four decades living in a series of flophouses and other dumps in Los Angeles and San Francisco (hence “skid row pianism”). He also married, divorced, married, divorced, philandered, drank heavily, married, divorced – and on and on.
Nyiregyházi re-emerged in the 1970s when a series of unplanned events thrust him back in the public eye. He recorded for several years (I have three of his albums) but never completely left his life of poverty behind him. By then in his seventies, he had his fifteen minutes of fame. Or maybe twenty minutes; he was big in Japan, for a while. But eventually he slid back into obscurity. He died, forgotten again, in 1987.
This is all described in detail, in Lost Genius. I recommend this book. The story is fascinating and the writing is fine. My biggest complaint with Lost Genius is its dearth of endnotes and other source material. In nonfiction I like to know where every last quote, every last assertion, comes from. This is how we test the veracity of any material. Some is there, but not nearly enough.
*
BTW, that last name? Pronunciation is usually rendered NEAR-edge-hah-zee. There’s a Wikipedia page on him, and a bunch of stuff on YouTube.
__
NOTES
“More plausibly, perhaps it was...” Carol Mont Parker, Clavier, January 1979.
“For those wishing to explore...” Unnamed reviewer, Clavier, January 1979.
“A free and intense...” from Stereo Review, January 1978.
“The more gushing...” from Time magazine, May 29, 1978.
I put this review, with some pretty pictures, on my blog.
Finally: the full title of my hardback copy is Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy, and it was published in 2007 by Carroll & Graf. The title is slightly different now, it appears. Whatever!
Final finally: According to a footnote on p. 229, Nyiregyházi “was intrigued by the Kennedy assassination, and composed several pieces about it. He was convinced Oswald was innocent and that Kennedy had been the victim of a right-wing conspiracy.” So intrigued, in fact, that he wrote an (apparently) unpublished Letter to the Editor of the Saturday Evening Post in 1967 in which he “outlined his theory.” I like Nyiregyházi even more now!
Ever hear of him? Probably not.
You may know the names Vladimir Horowitz, Van Cliburn, and other 20th Century pianistic titans. But Nyiregyházi?
Whether Nyiregyházi even belongs in the class of pianistic titans is debatable. And it has been debated, ever since he re-emerged in the early 1970s after decades of obscurity. Lost Genius argues that yes, he does belong.
A lot was written about Nyiregyházi in the 1970s. A lot was written about him in the 1920s, too. In between? Mostly silence.
As a child prodigy born in Budapest, Nyiregyházi was compared favorably to Mozart. He seemed to master music effortlessly. He began composing his own stuff at four or five and played before heads of state and other dignitaries throughout Europe. A shrink wrote a book about him, and he was generally lauded as the Next Big Thing.
Nyiregyházi debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1920 when he was just seventeen. But he was difficult to work with and alienated the musical establishment, and it killed his career.
Or did it? “More plausibly, perhaps it was his unorthodox, limited, self-indulgent repertoire,” wrote a critic in 1979, in reviewing a new Nyiregyházi album. Another reviewer dismissed him thusly: “For those wishing to explore skid row pianism, this album is recommended.”
Yet his style of playing excited many listeners, too. It has been described as “a free and intense ‘grand manner’ that goes back to the heyday of Romanticism as exemplified by Liszt himself – and that has come to be regarded with suspicion and/or derision in our antiseptic age.” Nyiregyházi put it this way: “The more gushing, the better.”
In any case, Nyiregyházi was basically washed up by his mid-twenties. But he liked the United States and stayed here, spending most of the next four decades living in a series of flophouses and other dumps in Los Angeles and San Francisco (hence “skid row pianism”). He also married, divorced, married, divorced, philandered, drank heavily, married, divorced – and on and on.
Nyiregyházi re-emerged in the 1970s when a series of unplanned events thrust him back in the public eye. He recorded for several years (I have three of his albums) but never completely left his life of poverty behind him. By then in his seventies, he had his fifteen minutes of fame. Or maybe twenty minutes; he was big in Japan, for a while. But eventually he slid back into obscurity. He died, forgotten again, in 1987.
This is all described in detail, in Lost Genius. I recommend this book. The story is fascinating and the writing is fine. My biggest complaint with Lost Genius is its dearth of endnotes and other source material. In nonfiction I like to know where every last quote, every last assertion, comes from. This is how we test the veracity of any material. Some is there, but not nearly enough.
*
BTW, that last name? Pronunciation is usually rendered NEAR-edge-hah-zee. There’s a Wikipedia page on him, and a bunch of stuff on YouTube.
__
NOTES
“More plausibly, perhaps it was...” Carol Mont Parker, Clavier, January 1979.
“For those wishing to explore...” Unnamed reviewer, Clavier, January 1979.
“A free and intense...” from Stereo Review, January 1978.
“The more gushing...” from Time magazine, May 29, 1978.
I put this review, with some pretty pictures, on my blog.
Finally: the full title of my hardback copy is Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy, and it was published in 2007 by Carroll & Graf. The title is slightly different now, it appears. Whatever!
Final finally: According to a footnote on p. 229, Nyiregyházi “was intrigued by the Kennedy assassination, and composed several pieces about it. He was convinced Oswald was innocent and that Kennedy had been the victim of a right-wing conspiracy.” So intrigued, in fact, that he wrote an (apparently) unpublished Letter to the Editor of the Saturday Evening Post in 1967 in which he “outlined his theory.” I like Nyiregyházi even more now!
August 26, 2022
Ervin Nyiregyházi was born in Budapest in 1903. His father was a singer in the Royal Opera Chorus in Budapest. He showed a great interest and capability in music from age one on. He was able to compose his own music by age two, which I find very remarkable. He was tested for intelligence due to this, and scored well above average for his age. Unfortunately, his father died when he was twelve, leaving him with his mother who he did not get along with. He would make claims that she sexually molested him, which is possible, but she was certainly what we would think of today as a Dance Mom or Pageant Mom. His mother evidently died in a Nazi concentration camp, and, according to him, he was quite please. At age 15, he performed Liszt's Piano Concerto in A major with the Berlin Philharmonic under Arthur Nikisch. Unfortunately, his management did him pretty dirty, and he wound up suing them. This was probably the start of his slide into the shadows. He wound up dying of colon cancer in 1987. He is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, which is a place I would absolutely love to visit one day.
I had never heard of this man before I found this book by accident while browsing at my local used bookstore that I love to frequent. I very much enjoyed learning about him. I looked up his work on YouTube and Spotify, and he truly was a very gifted musician and composer. I saved some of his pieces and performances to listen to again. If you are a fan of this type of music, this is a book and a man that you should absolutely check into.
I had never heard of this man before I found this book by accident while browsing at my local used bookstore that I love to frequent. I very much enjoyed learning about him. I looked up his work on YouTube and Spotify, and he truly was a very gifted musician and composer. I saved some of his pieces and performances to listen to again. If you are a fan of this type of music, this is a book and a man that you should absolutely check into.
February 19, 2026
Big shout out to the gentleman that noticed me pick this book off the shelf at The Strand back in December and said, "Hey that's really great book." He was right.
December 19, 2007
I remember when this guy made his "comeback" in the early eighties. His approach to the piano was rather loud. He was profiled glowingly on "60 Minutes". He was a nut! But he could definitely tickle them ivories. This bio is a fair and evocative account of one weird dude.
Want to read
October 18, 2007Ok, Michael Dirda, you've convinced me.
January 16, 2015
Fascinating book, about a clever but very damaged man. It's intrigued me sufficiently to delve into what recordings are still around.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews