I enjoyed my Nyiregyhazi Lizst LP for a good while but, yeah, he’s not exactly for the long haul.I think we must not judge E.N. on the same scale than most others contemporary pianists...
Sometimes a genius put the scale balance himself and created it and accept to be weighted only by his own standards...
Being a "romantic" player means, in the case of E.N. like it was for Liszt , of which he was almost a direct pupil, means i said, not a "rendition" of written music like it was written from the sheet information, not at all...
It means recreating the works for the TIME moment actually in process, to WORK and transform the listener soul and consciousness willing it or unwilling...
It is first an intense ceremony and it is a beautiful possible experience only in a secondary manner...
No intense ceremony can be produced WITHOUT to some level the active conscious/subconscious participation of the listener... If a beautiful object wait passively there to be seen for example, a loving woman need an active embrace...Love is not an esthetical experience only...
E.N. passionnately hated with all the power of his soul concert touring, his abandonning of his carreer and the paying price is testimony for that...He never practice nor even own a piano for decades...He afford one when he can between his 10 wifes he must successfully feed before paying for a decent room with a piano.... He lives a life of misery and glory at the same time... We must read about his life to understand😊
A sacred ceremony cannot be a concerts string of repeated same works.... E.N., like Liszt was, according to the history and legend, way more than a pianist reproducing some work, it was a theurge recreating the link between God and man....
Then comparing him to the average great pianist is meaningless...A volcanic eruption does not compared to a mountain so great the mountain is....
It is easy to point to some " imperfections" of his playings... But to repeat a great french poet René Char, "imperfection is the peak"....No one ever played at the end of a broken chain, with so much power at his own risk...NONE....
Like seeing an angel is terrible, and was, saying Rilke, like seeing "death",listening E.N. is not at times tasting a beautiful piece at all...It is being transformed by the event, willing or unwilling, by going for it or going back with contempt and fear or hate away from it.... So is God or a volcanic eruption, some throw themselves in the crater others panicked or only careful and cautious go back and retreat in more pacified water....