Lost Genius

The author explores the bizarre, untold life of a brilliant and eccentric musician. The composer Arnold Schoenberg called him an utterly extraordinary pianist of incredible originality and conviction, yet today he is all but forgotten. Born in Budapest in 1903, Ervin Nyiregyhzi (nyeer-edge-hah-zee) was a remarkable prodigy. At eight he performed at Buckingham Palace, and when he was thirteen, a psychologist published a book about him. In his teens, his idiosyncratic, intensely Romantic playing electrified audiences and astounded critics in Europe and America. But his adult career quickly foundered, and he was reduced to penury. In 1928, he settled in Los Angeles, and eventually he withdrew from public life, preferring to spend his time quietly composing. 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 described himself as a fortissimo bastard, yet such was his talent and charisma that he numbered among his friends and champions celebrities such as Jack Dempsey, Theodore Dreiser, Bela Lugosi, and Gloria Swanson. Rediscovered in the 1970s, he enjoyed a brief, sensational, and controversial renaissance before slipping back into obscurity. He died in 1987. Lost Genius, the product of ten years research, is the first biography of Nyiregyhzi, whose story is among the most fascinating and bizarre in twentieth-century music.