Kevin Bazzana

Objeto de un culto a la personalidad comparable a los de James Dean o Elvis Presley, la vida y la obra de Glenn Gould han recibido una atención póstuma sin precedentes, fruto en gran parte de los numerosos interrogantes que suscita su excentrica personalidad, inasequible a los topicos, rodeada de misterio, hipocondriaca y aparentemente asexuada.

The award-winning author of Wondrous Strange, the critically acclaimed biography of Glenn Gould, explores the bizarre, untold life of another 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 Nyiregyhazi (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 Nyiregyhazi, whose story is among the most fascinating and bizarre in twentieth-century music.

The first major biography of Glenn Gould to stress the critical influence of the Canadian context on his life and artGlenn Gould was not, as has previously been suggested, an isolated and self-taught eccentric who burst out of nowhere onto the international musical scene in the mid-1950s. He was, says Kevin Bazzana in this fascinating new full-scale biography, very much a product of his time and place and his entire life and diverse work reflect his Canadian heritage.Bazzana, editor of the international Glenn Gould magazine, throws fresh light on this and many other aspects of Goulds celebrated life as a pianist, writer, broadcaster, and composer. He portrays Goulds upbringing in Torontos neighbourhood of The Beach in the 1930s, revealing the areas influence as a distinct social, religious, and cultural milieu. He looks at the impact of Canadian radio on the young musician, his relations with the new music crowd in Toronto, and the ways in which his career was furthered by the extraordinary growth of Canadas cultural institutions in the 1950s. He examines Goulds place within the CBC culture of the 1960s and 70s, and his distinctly Canadian sense of humour.Bazanna also reveals new information on Goulds famous eccentricities, his sometimes bizarre stage manner, his highly selective repertoire, his control mania, his private and sexual life, his hypochondria, his romanticism, and his abrupt retirement from concert performance to communicate solely through electronic and print media. And finally, he takes a detailed look at the extraordinary phenomenon of the posthumous life that Gould and his work have enjoyed.

Cuando se habla de pianistas es necesario hablar de Glenn Gould.Dotado de una memoria excepcional, una mente con una impresionante organización lógica, destreza manual y una increíble capacidad de analisis, sus grabaciones de Bach ocupan un lugar privilegiado en la historia de la musica y, sin embargo, son escasos los estudios biograficos que sobre el se han publicado.Kevin Bazzana dedico veinte años a investigar y documentar la vida de Gould y ha tenido acceso a los papeles privados del musico, asi como a personas de su circulo de amistades que no habian sido entrevistadas hasta ahora. El resultado arroja nuevos y apasionantes datos sobre el pianista canadiense: su vida sentimental, sus antecedentes familiares; el misterioso mal que afecto sus manos durante los ultimos años de su carrera o su fallido intento por convertirse en compositor.