Authors: Margaret Helfgott
David also began to receive excellent reviews in British papers. In the
Buckinghamshire Examiner
in 1969 under the headline “Pianist Played on Until Midnight,” David Chesterman wrote: “When 22-year-old David Helfgott,
an Australian pianist, finished his programme at Germains on Sunday, many of the audience refused to go home, and demanded
more. He was supplied with coffee and something a little stronger, and he continued playing till after midnight, finishing
with that musical Everest, the Liszt Sonata. David Helfgott is a man who, once seated at a piano, moves straight into the
world of music, oblivious of everything else …”
David was awarded a scholarship in 1969 (after his grant from the University of Western Australia music department ran out),
and his professor at the Royal College even compared his technique to that of the world-renowned Russian-born pianist Vladimir
Horowitz. David told us about these triumphs in his letters and naturally we were all thrilled.
He also wrote with great enthusiasm about the concerts he attended. “I have been to two Barenboim recitals (all Beethoven
sonatas)—what a pianist; and what a personality he’s got! He plays superbly,” he wrote in one letter. “I’ve got a ticket for
Vladimir Ashkenazy in Brahms’s Second Concerto, I’m so excited,’ he said in another. David told us that on the morning after
a concert he would get up early and rush off to buy the score he had heard the night before and then sit in a cafe and study
it in detail.
He also kept us informed about his own progress as a musician. In one letter he proudly told how he was going to play at the
Wigmore Hall—a small but distinguished venue where many of the world’s greatest performers have appeared. David had already
mastered composers such as Rachmaninoff and Balakirev prior to his studies at the Royal College of Music; he told us that
while in London his aim was to master other composers, of whose work he was not yet in full command. In one of his letters
to Dad, he talked about grappling with the intricacies of Liszt, whom he referred to as a “demon.” (Many years later, in 1993,
David would actually have the opportunity of playing on Liszt’s own piano in the composer’s former house in Weimar, Germany.
He described the occasion at the time as the “most spiritual and moving musical experience of my life.”)
David’s letters to his siblings, like the ones to his parents, are full of affection. The letters to me begin “Dear Marg”
or “Dear Maggie” and usually end “love always” circled by a ring of kisses. (I have been unable to secure permission from
Gillian to reprint them.) His letters to Leslie are particularly charming. He asks his younger brother how his violin playing
is coming along; in one letter he tells him that he has bought a new sponge-covered table-tennis racket and is looking forward
to challenging him to a game next time they meet. Leslie, who collected coins, was absolutely thrilled when David sent him
an “Elizabeth I” English shilling dating from 1571 for his birthday.
David also sent us a number of photos from London. We even received one from his stopover in Egypt on his journey to England
in which he is smiling and wearing a fez, with several camels sitting idly in the background.
One person who got to know David well while they were both students at the Royal College is Niel Immelman, now professor of
piano there. Professor Immelman told me that at that time David seemed to be at the peak of his performing ability as a pianist.
“I first came across David in a practicing room at the Royal College of Music,” says Professor Immelman. “He was playing the
first solo in the Brahms Second Concerto and I was struck by the sheer physicality of his approach. As I got to know him better,
through playing second piano for some of his lessons on Rachmaninoff, I came to admire his lightning-quick reflexes and his
outstanding ear. David had supreme technical ability and a flair for public performance. Although he was not overendowed with
social skills, his warm, outgoing nature made him very popular with his fellow students. One of his party tricks—and if there
was a piano at a party David would spend 90 percent of the time playing it—was to play both the solo and orchestral parts
of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto without missing out anything. When asked how long it took him to make this transcription,
he replied, ‘Oh, I didn’t make it, I just play what I hear.’” (David’s ability to sight read difficult or complex music without
having to practice beforehand, is a rare gift indeed.)
When David arrived in England, the “Swinging Sixties” were at their peak, and with its bright lights and Beatlemania, its
shops, museums, theaters and galleries, there were few places more exciting than London. “When David and I were students in
the sixties, the Royal College of Music was a friendly and easygoing place,” Immelman continues. “Not too much academic work
was demanded from those of us on the Performers Course, which left us plenty of time for practicing and concert attendance.
David was often seen in the audience at performances by the great pianists of the time such as Arrau, Annie Fischer, Gilels,
Richter, and Rubinstein. There was time to reflect and we learned much from discussions with our fellow students in the college
canteen and the college pub, affectionately known as ‘the 99’— there were only 98 teaching rooms before the new extension
was opened in the sixties.”
But despite (or perhaps because of) the crowds and excitement, London can be a very lonely and overwhelming place for the
outsider from the “back of beyond.” In Perth, David had been a local celebrity, a big fish in a small pond. In London, he
no longer had just his siblings to compete with, but was surrounded by talented child prodigies and slick, sophisticated urbanites.
As time went by the tone of David’s letters began to change. He seemed to be becoming increasingly distressed and confused,
and to be moving frequently from place to place. Initially Hillel, a Jewish student organization, had helped David find accommodation
in Willesden, where he rented a room in the house of a Jewish widow, Mrs. Strauss, who also used to cook for him. But after
a while, almost every letter seemed to have a new return address. Accustomed to Perth’s mild climate, David was having great
difficulty in adjusting to the London weather and, perhaps because he wasn’t dressing sensibly, he was very cold in the winter.
He was unable to manage his budget properly and so frequently found himself without money. He told us he would spend his last
five or ten pounds purchasing a front-row ticket for a Rubinstein concert rather than pay for food or rent. He spent the large
sum that it cost at the time to buy contact lenses, but then had no money left for a scarf in winter. He said that he was
beginning to miss his family and that it wasn’t easy for him to be alone in the large and unfamiliar world of London, forced
to fend for himself. He even spoke about having terrible nightmares. We were all very worried by these letters, which not
only revealed David to be suffering financially, physically, and emotionally, but also seemed to indicate a precarious mental
state. Leslie, the next eldest child, remembers this period well: “At first, there was normal communication between David
and the family. His breakdown occurred gradually. After a while, he couldn’t cope, he was going to pieces. Dad wrote to David
very often, trying to help and advise him, and David wrote back regularly. He did not seem to be in a good living environment
or to be eating well—at one point he subsisted on a diet of chocolates, milk, and wine. Nor did he seem to have enough money.
His letters became erratic and his handwriting strange. We could see changes in his mental state through his letters.”
David’s letters caused my father tremendous anxiety and pain. He desperately wanted to go and visit his son, but he did not
have the financial means to make the trip. We were still too poor to afford a telephone, so we could not even speak to him.
My father’s concern reached such a point that he began urging David to return home. Dad wrote to me about this when I was
in Melbourne, in a letter dated August 4, 1970: “When David told me in one of his letters that he is sick and of all his troubles,
my reply was to pack his bags and come home without a care in the world to worry about. As a matter of fact, I pointed out
to him to let me do all the worrying.” (A short while later David did actually take up Dad’s suggestion and returned home.)
My father wrote to David frequently. Naturally he didn’t usually keep copies of his own letters, so we no longer have them.
Only one has been found and it provides a little of the flavor of my father’s attitude to David. One must bear in mind that
English was my father’s third language, and his written English was not perfect—he had never been taught formally how to write.
The letter, from October 1969, reads as follows:
“Dear, Dear, Dave,
It made us very happy to hear from you so soon, and that your problems are easing off. It is a matter of fact, I had a lot
of problems myself, or at least I thought I did, till one day I decided to take control of them … So what did I do? I considered
every problem and analyzed it from every aspect, and what do you think? I found that I had no problems at all, as happiness
doesn’t really lie in certain material gains, as sometimes they have the opposite effect—when you got it, you find you don’t
want it…
But I can assure you that with your musical ear and the present knowledge you possess you will have no trouble to enjoy life
to the utmost, provided you look after yourself while you are in London alone … I’d like to know whether you still keep up
your physical exercises. Let us know, all love and kisses from everybody,
Your loving Pop, xxxxx “
Throughout his time in London, David also maintained a regular correspondence with Professor Callaway from the University
of Western Australia. At first his letters were warm and enthusiastic, and Callaway was always friendly when he wrote back.
He told David about important “milestones in my own musical career” by way of encouragement, and told him to “keep working
hard.”
But after a while the letters to Professor Callaway, like the ones to his family, displayed mounting distress. Callaway, too,
traces David’s descent into illness to his period in London. He told me: “I first began to become aware of David’s inability
to look after himself through the lines of his letters. The reports by his professor, Cyril Smith, also suggested something
was afoot. They indicated David’s studies were haphazard and regressing. I saw this for myself in 1968-69 when I met David
three times during my stay in London. Although he appeared happy in some respects, he also appeared overly excitable and was
very worried about money problems.”
In 1969, Mr. and Mrs. Luber-Smith went to visit David in London. In recalling her trip later, Mrs. Luber-Smith remembered
that by his third year David had started seeing a psychiatrist. She also said that David had found himself living quarters
that were crawling with rats and mice, and that he had bought a dilapidated old piano. The place in which he was living, she
added, was “awful” but he was very happy as long as he had a piano.
Mrs. Luber-Smith had been surprised when she had gone to a concert in which David was scheduled to perform, but he hadn’t
turned up. The audience had sat, slightly embarrassed, in the dark while the stage remained empty; one of the organizers had
cried out “David Helfgott! David Helfgott!” repeating this again a few minutes later, but there was no response. So the harpist
who was due to perform next, had taken David’s place on stage. Twenty minutes later David appeared and took over from the
harpist. After the concert, Mrs. Luber-Smith asked David where he had been and what had caused the delay. David replied, without
any hint that his behavior was out of the ordinary: “I went to have a steak. I was hungry.”
This kind of erratic behavior was also observed by Morry Herman, a mathematician from Perth. He remembers visiting relatives
in London in 1967. “We were round at some friends for a dinner party and David Helfgott, who was then at the peak of his career,
was due to give a private recital. But he dropped his contact lens and all present then spent the entire evening on their
hands and knees looking for it, and no music was performed.”
David’s reports from the Royal College also show a mixed record. They read as follows:
REPORT ON STUDIES, ACADEMIC YEAR 1966-67
Mr. David Helfgott
Subject Piano. Professor Cyril Smith: “He has bursts of brilliant playing, but needs a steadier application to sound work
and more attention to basic rhythmic problems.”
Composition/Analysis. Mr. Bryan Kelly: “A rather muddled year, a keen pupil but emotion dominates over mind and the results
are hectic.”
REPORT ON STUDIES, ACADEMIC YEAR 1967-68
Mr. David Helfgott
Subject Piano. Professor Cyril Smith: “He has extraordinary pianistic talent, but his work is ill-organized and spasmodic.”
Composition/Analysis. Mr. Bryan Kelly: “Enthusiastic, but convinced that emotion is more important than mind.”
REPORT ON STUDIES, ACADEMIC YEAR 1968-69
Mr. David Helfgott
Subject Piano. Professor Cyril Smith: “In many ways he is, even now, scarcely reliable, never having his feet placed quite
squarely on the ground, but there have been moments and even minutes of near genius.”
Composition. Mr. Bryan Kelly: “Mr. Helfgott is, without question, the most frustrating student I have ever tried to work with.
Being totally undisciplined, incredibly sloppy, and oblivious to suggestion, he has produced no single, complete meaningful
piece of music. Behind his incomprehensible (but often delightful) exterior, there seems to be considerable talent but it
is thoroughly confounded by his approach to things.”
REPORT ON STUDIES, ACADEMIC YEAR 1969-1970
Mr. David Helfgott
Subject Piano. Professor Cyril Smith: “His life has been so disordered and chaotic that pianistic progress has only been allowed
sporadic opportunity. Nevertheless, such fantastic hands have sometimes produced almost unbelievably brilliant passages.”