David Helfgott
Encyclopedia
David Helfgott is an Australia
n concert pianist. He is as well known for having schizoaffective disorder
as he is for his piano playing. Helfgott's life inspired the Oscar
-winning film Shine
, in which he was played by Geoffrey Rush
.
after his father started teaching him the piano when he was five. When he was ten years old he studied under Frank Arndt, a Perth piano teacher, and won several local competitions—sometimes alone and sometimes with his elder sister Margaret.
At the age of fourteen while studying at Mount Lawley Senior High School
, people such as Perth composer James Penberthy
and writer Katharine Susannah Prichard
raised money to enable him to go to the United States to study music. However, his father denied him permission on the grounds that he was not ready for independence (and presumably also given early indications of mental illness). From age 17 he studied with Alice Carrard, a former student of Béla Bartók
and István Thomán
. He won the state final of the ABC
Instrumental and Vocal Competition six times.
in London, England, where he studied under the pianist Cyril Smith
for three years. The awards he won at the RCM included the Dannreuther Prize for Best Concerto Performance for his performance of Rachmaninoff
's Piano Concerto No. 3
.
During his time in London he began showing more definite manifestations of schizoaffective disorder
. He returned to Perth in 1970. The following year he married Clare Papp, an older woman with four children. He worked as a rehearsal pianist for the Western Australian Opera Company and also took part in several ABC concerts. After his brief marriage broke down he was institutionalised in "Graylands", a Perth mental hospital. Over the next ten years, he underwent psychiatric treatment which included psychotropic medication and electroconvulsive therapy
.
In 1983 his brother Les Helfgott found him work at a Perth wine bar called Riccardo's. In 1984, at Riccardo's, Helfgott met Gillian Murray, an astrologer
. They married later that year.
, which dealt with the pianist's formative years and struggle with mental illness. Helfgott was portrayed by actors Geoffrey Rush
(adult), Noah Taylor
(teenager) and Alex Rafalowicz (child). The film has come in for strong criticism from Helfgott's sister for a range of alleged inaccuracies, particularly for the portrayal of his father as a tyrannical despot.
, mostly Mussorgsky
, Rachmaninoff
, Chopin
, Liszt
, Schumann
and Rimsky-Korsakov
. However, his recordings and performances, especially that of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3
, have been criticized as "pallid, erratic and incoherent." Of the two commercial recordings released by RCA
, the American journal Fanfare Magazine
was critical not only of Helfgott himself, but also of his producers, who were "marketing Helfgott's pain." The British magazine Gramophone was similarly scathing about the exploitative nature of their issue, which, the magazine said, marketed Helfgott as an "unsung genius" when it was obvious from the recordings that he was not.
On stage, Helfgott is known for his unusual platform manner. In 1997, critic Anthony Tommasini
noted that Helfgott "stares into the hall and renders a nonstop commentary of grunts, groans and mutterings".
In December 1999, Helfgott was the opener for the "Geniuses, Savants and Prodigies" conference of Allan Snyder
's Centre for the Mind
.
Also in 1999, Helfgott appeared on the rock group Silverchair
's album Neon Ballroom
(on the opening track, Emotion Sickness). Ben Gillies
, the drummer of Silverchair, described Helfgott's adding of the brilliant and difficult piano track to the song, as one of the greatest things he'd seen a musician do. The piano arrangement was made by Larry Muhoberac
.
Helfgott tours Australia annually and plays a small number of recitals in other countries.
in New South Wales, with his second wife, Gillian.
When not at the piano his other interests include reading, watching television, listening to music (preferably all at the same time), cat
s, chess
, philosophy
, swimming and keeping fit. A former cigarette smoker
, Helfgott quit 30 years ago due to the influence of his wife.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n concert pianist. He is as well known for having schizoaffective disorder
Schizoaffective disorder
Schizoaffective disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by recurring episodes of elevated or depressed mood, or of simultaneously elevated and depressed mood, that alternate with, or occur together with, distortions in perception.Schizoaffective disorder...
as he is for his piano playing. Helfgott's life inspired the Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
-winning film Shine
Shine (film)
Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris...
, in which he was played by Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen...
.
Early life
Helfgott was born in Melbourne to Polish-Jewish parents. He became known as a child prodigyChild prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
after his father started teaching him the piano when he was five. When he was ten years old he studied under Frank Arndt, a Perth piano teacher, and won several local competitions—sometimes alone and sometimes with his elder sister Margaret.
At the age of fourteen while studying at Mount Lawley Senior High School
Mount Lawley Senior High School
Mount Lawley Senior High School is a state high school in the Perth suburb of Mount Lawley, Western Australia.- Notable alumni :* Holly Deane-Johns* Marcus Graham* David Helfgott* Tammy MacIntosh* Nikita Rukavytsya* James Smillie* Graeme Snooks...
, people such as Perth composer James Penberthy
James Penberthy
James Penberthy AM was an Australian composer and journalist.He was born Albert James Penberthy in Melbourne in 1917. He served with the Royal Australian Navy during World War II. He then studied at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained first class honours in composition...
and writer Katharine Susannah Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia.-Biography:...
raised money to enable him to go to the United States to study music. However, his father denied him permission on the grounds that he was not ready for independence (and presumably also given early indications of mental illness). From age 17 he studied with Alice Carrard, a former student of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
and István Thomán
István Thomán
István Thomán was a Hungarian piano virtuoso and music educator. He was appointed by Franz Liszt to teach at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music in Budapest . István Thomán was a notable piano teacher, with students including Ernő Dohnányi, Georges Cziffra, and Béla Bartók...
. He won the state final of the ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
Instrumental and Vocal Competition six times.
London studies and mental illness
At the age of nineteen, Helfgott won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of MusicRoyal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
in London, England, where he studied under the pianist Cyril Smith
Cyril Smith (pianist)
Cyril James Smith OBE was a virtuoso concert pianist of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and a piano teacher.-Personal life:...
for three years. The awards he won at the RCM included the Dannreuther Prize for Best Concerto Performance for his performance of Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
's Piano Concerto No. 3
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, composed in 1909 by Sergei Rachmaninoff is famous for its technical and musical demands on the performer...
.
During his time in London he began showing more definite manifestations of schizoaffective disorder
Schizoaffective disorder
Schizoaffective disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by recurring episodes of elevated or depressed mood, or of simultaneously elevated and depressed mood, that alternate with, or occur together with, distortions in perception.Schizoaffective disorder...
. He returned to Perth in 1970. The following year he married Clare Papp, an older woman with four children. He worked as a rehearsal pianist for the Western Australian Opera Company and also took part in several ABC concerts. After his brief marriage broke down he was institutionalised in "Graylands", a Perth mental hospital. Over the next ten years, he underwent psychiatric treatment which included psychotropic medication and electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
.
In 1983 his brother Les Helfgott found him work at a Perth wine bar called Riccardo's. In 1984, at Riccardo's, Helfgott met Gillian Murray, an astrologer
Astrologer
An astrologer practices one or more forms of astrology. Typically an astrologer draws a horoscope for the time of an event, such as a person's birth, and interprets celestial points and their placements at the time of the event to better understand someone, determine the auspiciousness of an...
. They married later that year.
Shine
Helfgott was the subject of the 1996 film ShineShine (film)
Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris...
, which dealt with the pianist's formative years and struggle with mental illness. Helfgott was portrayed by actors Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen...
(adult), Noah Taylor
Noah Taylor
Noah George Taylor is an English-born Australian actor.-Early life:Taylor, elder of two boys, was born in London, England, the son of Maggie, a journalist and book editor, and Paul Taylor, a copywriter and journalist. Taylor's Australian parents returned to Australia when he was five, and he grew...
(teenager) and Alex Rafalowicz (child). The film has come in for strong criticism from Helfgott's sister for a range of alleged inaccuracies, particularly for the portrayal of his father as a tyrannical despot.
Current musical career
Helfgott generally prefers to perform Romantic musicRomantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
, mostly Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
, Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
and Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
. However, his recordings and performances, especially that of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, composed in 1909 by Sergei Rachmaninoff is famous for its technical and musical demands on the performer...
, have been criticized as "pallid, erratic and incoherent." Of the two commercial recordings released by RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
, the American journal Fanfare Magazine
Fanfare Magazine
Fanfare is a magazine devoted to reviewing classical music performance and recordings.Fanfare's contributors have a range of expertise from the medieval to contemporary work...
was critical not only of Helfgott himself, but also of his producers, who were "marketing Helfgott's pain." The British magazine Gramophone was similarly scathing about the exploitative nature of their issue, which, the magazine said, marketed Helfgott as an "unsung genius" when it was obvious from the recordings that he was not.
On stage, Helfgott is known for his unusual platform manner. In 1997, critic Anthony Tommasini
Anthony Tommasini
-Early years:Tommasini was born in Brooklyn around 1948 and raised on Long Island. He was admitted to Oberlin College's Conservatory of Music, but chose to matriculate at Yale University in order to obtain a broader liberal arts education...
noted that Helfgott "stares into the hall and renders a nonstop commentary of grunts, groans and mutterings".
In December 1999, Helfgott was the opener for the "Geniuses, Savants and Prodigies" conference of Allan Snyder
Allan Snyder
Allan Whitenack Snyder is the director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, Australia where he also holds the 150th Anniversary Chair of Science and the Mind...
's Centre for the Mind
Centre for the Mind
The Centre for the Mind is the brainchild of Professor Allan Snyder FRS, and was launched at the historic Museum of Sydney on 4 August 1997. Dr Oliver Sacks, renowned author and neurobiologist, delivered the Foundation Lecture on "Creativity and the Mind" at the gala public opening on 5 August 1997...
.
Also in 1999, Helfgott appeared on the rock group Silverchair
Silverchair
Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle with the line-up of Ben Gillies on drums, Chris Joannou on bass guitar and Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo...
's album Neon Ballroom
Neon Ballroom
Neon Ballroom is the third studio album by Australian alternative rock band Silverchair and was released on 8 March 1999. The album debuted at number-one on the ARIA Albums Chart and was certified 4× platinum by ARIA. It was also certified Gold in the United States...
(on the opening track, Emotion Sickness). Ben Gillies
Ben Gillies
Benjamin David Gillies is an Australian musician, best known as the drummer of Australian rock band Silverchair.Born in Merewether, a suburb of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, he started as a quad drummer in the band The Marching Koalas, before forming the band Innocent Criminals at the age...
, the drummer of Silverchair, described Helfgott's adding of the brilliant and difficult piano track to the song, as one of the greatest things he'd seen a musician do. The piano arrangement was made by Larry Muhoberac
Larry Muhoberac
Larry Muhoberac is an American musician, producer and composer who at various times has also been known as Larry Owens and Larry Gordon....
.
Helfgott tours Australia annually and plays a small number of recitals in other countries.
Personal life
Helfgott lives in The Promised Land, a valley near BellingenBellingen, New South Wales
Bellingen is a small town on Waterfall Way on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is approximately halfway between the major Australian cities of Sydney and Brisbane...
in New South Wales, with his second wife, Gillian.
When not at the piano his other interests include reading, watching television, listening to music (preferably all at the same time), cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
s, chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, swimming and keeping fit. A former cigarette smoker
Tobacco smoking
Tobacco smoking is the practice where tobacco is burned and the resulting smoke is inhaled. The practice may have begun as early as 5000–3000 BCE. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 16th century where it followed common trade routes...
, Helfgott quit 30 years ago due to the influence of his wife.
Awards
- State Finalist ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition (6 times)
- Time for Peace
- Honorary Doctorate of Music. Edith Cowan UniversityEdith Cowan UniversityEdith Cowan University is located in Perth, Western Australia. It was named after the first woman to be elected to an Australian Parliament, Edith Cowan, and is the only Australian university named after a woman....
(Perth, Western Australia) - Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) - On 26 November 2006, David Helfgott was formally inducted into the Australian Walk of Fame. At the ceremony, he performed several classical pieces including Rachmaninoff's piano arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the BumblebeeFlight of the Bumblebee"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900. The piece closes Act III, Tableau 1, during which the magic Swan-Bird changes Prince Gvidon Saltanovich into an insect so that he can fly away to...
. - Dannreuther Prize for Best Concerto Performance for his performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3