David Helfgott
MAGAZINE ARTICLE
This article, published in Limelight Magazine’s August 2013 edition, examines the life and legacy of Australian pianist David Helfgott.
I pull into David Helfgott’s tranquil and secluded property just outside Bellengin in northern NSW with questions whizzing furiously in and out of my consciousness: What will he be like? Will he be able to maintain a coherent line of discussion? How will he react to problematic questions about his turbulent life? Most of us who have seen Shine, the Acadamy Award-winning 1997 biopic that so poignantly dramatises his life, are aware that the renowned Australian concert pianist hasn’t had it easy. A difficult relationship with his father, prolonged periods of social isolation and economic hardship, and a lifelong struggle with a psychological condition known as pschizoaffective disorder, make an interview with David Helfgott a minefield of potentially disturbing reopenings of deep emotional wounds.
I am warmly greeted at the front door by Gillian, his wife of 30 years, who then calls out, “David, you’ve got guests!” Moments later, David bursts into the room, a welcoming grin painted all over his affable visage, and I quickly realise that my troubled ruminations have been a pointless expense of energy. It may seem superfluous to say it, but David Helfgott appears in real life exactly as he is portrayed in the Scott Hicks film: impossibly warm and friendly, and constantly buzzing with an uncurbable supply of physical and mental energy. He takes an instant liking to my friend, Sam, who has made the journey to Bellingen from Sydney with me. “Sam, Sam, Sam…Oh, South American, are you? South America? Oh, beautiful place…The tango, the tango! Yes, they have the tango – lovely dance. Lovely, lovely. Very sensual.” His speech is a seamless stream of semi-coherent babble that spirals outwards in increasingly oblique tangents. As he chatters with Sam in hushed tones, he grabs him around the shoulders and holds him tight, displaying an unchecked tenderness that is endearing and entirely unthreatening.
After having watched Shine, Helfgott’s hyper-loquaciousness and his irresistible need to show affection – behaviour typically found in those suffering from David’s condition – didn’t come at all as a surprise. Geoffrey Rush’s prodigious mimetic skills had prepared me thoroughly for it, and Gillian is the first to approve of the actor’s portrayal of her husband. “For a while during the filming of Shine, I thought I had two husbands!” She explains with good-spirited chuckle. “I’d see a hunched-over male figure scuttle past and wonder, ‘How the heck did David get there so fast?’, and David’s sister Susie would say, ‘Gillian, it’s Geoffrey!’ He really is such a fine actor.” On other aspects of the film’s production, Gillian is equally generous with her praise: “Some dramatic license was used, of course – it had to be – but, by and large, (director) Scott Hicks and his crew worked with the utmost integrity. They captured David’s quirkiness without belittling him, and that’s where the film’s brilliance lies.”
For many of the 30-odd years Gillian has spent with David, she has been his carer, spokesperson, and personal manager, as well as his best friend and companion. In addition to looking after him in their home on a day-to-day basis, she organises aspects of his professional life, mediating and managing his media relations. For most of the interview, in fact, I direct my questions about David’s life and career, not to him, but to her, while he entertains Sam at the piano. Later on this year, when he embarks on his biggest-ever Australian tour at the age of 66, she will be by his side in each of the 23 cities – capital and regional – where, over a three-month period, he’ll be presenting works by Bach, Beethoven and Liszt. Having spent more time by his side than anyone else, no one is better qualified than she to be his personal chaperon. When I ask her whether his age or mental condition will be a concern during such a strenuous performance schedule, Gillian excitedly says, “He has boundless energy! He’ll be the one dragging me around, not vice versa!”
Yet what is it like living with someone of David’s eccentric temperament? Remembering an iconic scene from the film – the one in which ‘David’, having left the tap running and flooded the bathroom, is discovered jumping on the trampoline outside wearing nothing but an open trench coat – I press Gillian to reveal some of the challenges daily existence with David might throw at her. “There are trying moments now and then,” she admits, “but altogether, he’s the most loving, kind and fun partner you could ever hope for. He’s come a long way, and he’s quite good at cleaning up after himself now. Sometimes he even tells me off for leaving a mess! We’re quite happy together, and we’re very lucky.”
But life wasn’t always so blissful for David. In the mid ‘60s, a 19 year-old David received a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music in London. Despite strong objections from an overbearing father, David packed up and left for the British capital. At least at first, things seemed to be going well for the upcoming musician. Lessons under revered British pianist Cyril Smith were progressing well, and the young student’s performance of Rachmaninov’s third Piano Concerto – which would come to be known as his trademark piece – won him the prestigious Dannreuther concerto performance prize.
Things turned decidedly grim for David as increasingly manifest symptoms of his condition forced him to abandon his studies and cut short his time in the UK. A period of emotional instability, frequent hospitalization and estrangement from members of his family followed his return to Australia. He went from one institution to the other, eventually ending up in a halfway house with little to no possessions or money to his name. It was one of the darker, more silent moments of his life that involved very little music-making. And then, just as David may have thought things would never improve, a light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel: he got a job playing in a small wine bar in Perth and, there, met the lady who would become his wife.
Yet Shine may well have been the real defining moment in David’s life – certainly in his career. “It made a huge difference,” Gillian declares emphatically. “When I met David, he had 200 dollars and cane basket. Now look at what we have”. As she says this, she indicates the house and the extensive property beyond it, replete with a pool, graceful landscaped gardens, Japanese-style ornaments and a large water feature. “Lots of work came after Shine, and people started to recognize him everywhere.” At this point, tears well up in Gillian’s eyes. “Most importantly, the film gave David a renewed sense of self-worth, and since then, his joy for life has grown. His self-esteem is higher and he’s closer to his family. And we have Scott Hicks to thank for that.”
Now for another one of those perilous-but-crucial questions that a thorough examination of David’s life can’t overlook. In the film, David’s father is portrayed as a rather complex character; a stern and devoted parent who seems to have his family’s best interests at heart, but who ultimately alienates those he loves with his morbid possessiveness and disturbing aptitude for emotional manipulation. In Shine, David spends most of his life either trying desperately to win and secure his father’s approval, or struggling against the compulsion to do so. But how accurately was the father represented? How much of it was truth and how much dramatization? Gillian’s answer: “We both thought the way David’s father was portrayed was…fair.” She pauses and lowers her voice before the final word in apparent deference to a deceased man who – as flawed as he may have been – exerted a powerful shaping influence on those around him. “I won’t tell you the comment David made, because it wouldn’t look good in print. His father had an extremely difficult personality, but that had a lot to do with his childhood. Most of his family was killed in the war in Europe, and that made him overprotective of his children – not just David, but David’s sisters too.”
Gillian is clear, however, that despite the professional benefits it undoubtedly brought, David’s career as a concert pianist was alive and well before Shine was released. “David was playing in Europe for ten years before the film. He got stellar reviews after a tour in 1990, and in Copenhagen, they were calling his renditions of Liszt incomparable. In Germany, they refer to him as ‘the maestro’. The critics revere him.” And these unnamed old-world Helfgott sympathisers aren’t alone. David’s playing has quite often elicited statements of unbridled adulation from aficionados. Cyril Smith spoke of genius as he lauded David’s interpretations of the romantic virtuoso repertoire, and noted pianist and pedagogue Peter Feuchtwanger described him as “one of the most exceptional pianists and musicians I ever had the good fortune to know.”
From all this, one might understandably deduce that appreciation for Helfgott’s artistry is universal. Surely if the likes of Smith and Feuchtwanger hail him in such grandiose terms, then we are dealing with a talent so tangible, that denying it would be futile. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the more surprising things about David’s musicianship is the extent to which it polarises critics. For every ardent supporter, David has an equally zealous detractor ready to launch an angry tirade against his supposedly shoddy and lacklustre playing. Most famously, in a 1997 review by New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommasini, his recording of the Rachmaninov 3 was written off as “pallid, erratic and incoherent”, and his live performance in Symphony Hall, as “blankly emotionless.” A common attack David faces is that he is a helpless puppet in a carefully engineered publicity ploy aiming to place marketing emphasis on his dramatic life story in the hope of distracting attention from his obvious musical shortcomings. Here also, Gillian’s response is resolute: “Critics imply that we dragged David out of a mental institution and onto the stage, but that’s utter nonsense. At the end of the day, when David walks onto the stage, he has to be judged on what he gets out of the piano. He’s never failed to win an audience and, to me, that’s what matters.”
But that very argument could be usurped by his opponents and used in their favour. It is indeed true that David is popular with his audiences. He has an enchanting stage demeanour, and often ‘forgets’ to observe standard classical music performance protocols, shaking hands with audience members and hugging fellow performers. This breaks down formal barriers between audience and performer and endears him to the crowd, scoring him loud cheers and frequent standing ovations (at one concert at the Musikverein in Austria, the notoriously uptight and hard-to-please Viennese crowd gave him a surprise standing ovation at the end of the first half, with numerous listeners returning his enthusiastic thumbs-up in like). Yet his popularity could simply be a sign that his audience is willing to overlook the technical slip-ups and the emotional flatness because, in recompense, they’re getting a show of a different kind. Listen to his 1997 recordings of Chopin and Liszt, and it’s painfully evident that his opponents are onto something. His articulation is muddy, his melodic lines lack shape and fullness, his tempos jump about neurotically and, as a result, his renditions are poor in formal and structural cohesion.
Yet, in spite of the obvious musical deficiencies, does David Helfgott the pianist – and, just as importantly, the man – have something to say that no other musician can? It is hard to resist a reading of David’s life as a tale of success against the odds, and it is probably true that his publicists, managers and promoters have made use of this angle to some extent to contribute to the irresistible appeal of his public persona. What can’t be denied, is that this quality of the prototypical triumphant underdog lends an air of symbolic significance to David’s achievements. Despite the trials this life has reserved for him, David has effectively become Australia’s most famous classical music personality. And this has happened thanks to a mixture of talent, biographical accident, circumstance and, critically, the admirable constancy and devotion of his wife over the years. He is, without a doubt, a living symbol of the power of human love and resilience. But, as far as we’re all concerned, the most pressing question is, not whether his life is one worth telling and drawing inspiration from (which it clearly is), but rather, whether all this is reason enough to make a trip to the concert hall to see him. And this, I shall leave to you to decide.
