Word: liszt
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...First Presbyterian Church. A destitute old man with trembling hands sat down at the Baldwin piano to give a fund-raising recital for his sick wife's medical expenses. He had not practiced, or owned a piano, for four decades. He had not even looked at the music, Liszt's lengthy, difficult Legendes, in more than half a century. Yet when his ringers touched the keys, there came a burst of musical thunder, exploding octaves and a bass of such power and sonority that the Baldwin threatened to shake apart...
...rediscovery, one of the most bizarre comebacks in music history, has been as rapid as was his fall half a century earlier. The tapes of that church concert, along with a few Liszt pieces recorded under studio conditions, have been released as a Nyiregyházi Plays Liszt (IPA/Desmar) record. Critics exclaimed over the strange, powerful playing. In two further sets of taping sessions, underwritten by the Ford Foundation, Nyiregyházi played Liszt and other romantics; record release is now being negotiated. Meanwhile, NBC will be featuring Nyiregyházi on its June 3 Weekend show. He emerges...
...mother, Nyiregyházi became a performer. He made his orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of twelve, playing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, then completed a string of European tours over the next five years. Along the way, he happened upon the work of Liszt, then out of fashion. The great romantic, perhaps the most dramatic pianist of all time, became Nyiregyházi's mentor and model. "It was like discovering a new world," he says. "Such lyrical and dramatic intensity, such emphasis on the grandiose and imperial...
Nyiregyházi's record and tapes fascinate: in an age of precision playing, they are passionate. His slow tempos, like Liszt's, are funereal; each note seems weighted. He repeats at will sections that he finds lyrical. When he is loud, he is very, very loud, and often the great rushes of sound are overpedaled into a blur...
...best - as in Liszt's Ballade in B-Minor, on the IPA/Desmar record - the massive rumbling bass is an effective counterpoint to the ethereal run-work in the treble. It is an inspired interpretation; method and material work in harmony...