Music: Nine Wives and 700 Works Later

Nyiregyházi returns from out of the past

The miracle took place five years ago in San Francisco's Old 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...