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David Helfgott (born 19 May 1947) is an Australian 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, directed by Scott Hicks and starring Geoffrey Rush and Noah Taylor.
BiographyEarly lifeHe was born in Melbourne to Polish-Jewish parents
. He became known as a child prodigy after his father started teaching him the piano when he was six. 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 Helfgott.
When David was fourteen, various interested 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 the indications of mental illness).
London studies and mental illnessWhen he was nineteen, he won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music in London, England for three years, where he studied under Cyril Smith.
During his time in London he began showing more definite manifestations of mental illness. His doctor in Australia, Chris Reynolds, whom he met some twenty years later, said that he suffers from an acute anxiety neurosis. He returned to Perth in 1970, and married his first wife, Clara, in 1971. He also took part in several Australian Broadcasting Corporation concerts. After his 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.
ShineIn 1984, after performing for some years at a Perth wine bar called Riccardo's, he met astrologer Gillian Murray. Some months later they married, and he continued a successful playing career throughout the 1980s and 1990s in both Australia and Europe. In 1994 he played in Russia. The film Shine brought Helfgott the status of an Australian public figure.
Current musical careerHelfgott generally prefers to perform romantic music, mostly Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. However, his recordings and performances, especially that of Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto, have been criticized as "pallid, erratic and incoherent." Of the two commercial recordings released by RCA, the British magazine Gramophone was particularly scathing about the exploitative nature their issue, marketing Helfgott as an 'unsung genius' when it was obvious from the recordings that he was not.
In December 1999, David 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 rock group Silverchair's album Neon Ballroom. He appeared on the opening track, Emotion Sickness. Ben Gillies, the drummer of Silverchair called it the one of the greatest things he'd seen a musician do, when Helfgott added the brilliant, but difficult piano track to the song. The piano arrangement was done by Larry Muhoberac. The song continues to be played live, and is a fan favourite.
Personal lifeDavid Helfgott now lives in "The Promised Land", a valley near Bellingen in New South Wales with his second wife, Gillian. He continues to perform concerts at his home.
His other interests include cats, chess, philosophy, tennis, swimming and keeping fit in general.
Awards- State Finalist ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition (6 times)
- Time for Peace
- Honorary Doctorate of Music. Edith Cowan University (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 Bumblebee.
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