David used to perform at the Capitol Theater, which was then Perth’s main concert venue and the seat of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. (The Capitol has now been demolished and replaced by the Perth Concert Hall.) The whole family would go and hear him play and it was a thrilling experience for us all. We had to ensure David looked good and was properly dressed for such grand occasions, so any spare money would go toward clothes for him. My father had a lovely green corduroy jacket specially made up for him and he also wore smart trousers, nice shoes, and a cute little bow tie. David looked very elegant.
I felt very proud of my little brother up there playing with an orchestra. If it had been me performing in front of such a sizable audience at that age, I would have been very nervous; I used to keep my fingers crossed, hoping desperately that David didn’t forget anything or make mistakes. But not only did he always get through the pieces without any problems, he played beautifully.
David soon began entering Australia’s principal concerto and vocal music competition for young musicians, which was held every year under the auspices of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. First there were rounds in each state, then the winning pianist, instrumentalist, and singer would go forward to the nationwide final, known as the Commonwealth final, which was usually held in Sydney or Melbourne.
Every year David would enter this competition with a different piano concerto; he played concertos by Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Mozart, and Bach, interpreting their complexity quite brilliantly. He not only played them, he mastered them. He also played Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. He did not, as is strongly suggested in Shine, play Rachmaninoff’s Third for the first time many years later in London, which supposedly led to his collapse. He had played it on a number of occasions, both publicly and privately, over a period of several years, before he even went to London.
All in all, David was creating quite a sensation with his musical excellence and was constantly being written about in newspaper reports. By the time he turned thirteen in May 1960, not a month seemed to go by without David receiving several rave reviews and write-ups.
“Head judge Dr. William Lovelock complimented thirteen-year-old pianist David Helfgott, who brought the most sympathetic applause with his dextrous handling of Ravel’s often difficult Concerto in G Major,” wrote the music critic Francis King in The West Australian on June 17, I960.
“The audience was startled as thirteen-year-old David Helfgott gave an amazingly strong performance of the difficult Ravel Piano Concerto … David has that indefinable something—a quality which marks him for the future,” wrote James Penberthy, the music critic for one of Perth’s leading newspapers, the Sunday Times. “This is the first sight of a rare and prodigious talent, startling from one so young,’ he added.
“Individual talent was present in a highly promising young pianist, David Helfgott, who played three Hungarian dances by Brahms,” said another review.
The music critic Sally Trethowan, writing in another newspaper under the heading “Youth Shines in Concert” (which may have provided the inspiration for the title of Scott Hicks’s movie), said: “[Watching] the West Australian Symphony playing selections from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet … in the State Final of the Concerto and Vocal Competition … Joseph Post, as spokesman for the three judges, said that the standard of piano playing was very high … and they had chosen David Helfgott as winner of the piano section.”
These reviews of David’s performances come from my father’s collection of David’s clippings, which he certainly never burned as is depicted in Shine. After he died Leslie kept the clippings, and then passed them on to David. I made myself some copies years later.
Naturally, after winning the annual State final to such acclaim, which he did on many occasions, David felt very special. There was always an air of anticipation in the house in the days before he prepared to be sent for the plane ride on the long journey to one of Australia’s larger cities, Melbourne, Sydney, or Adelaide, where the Commonwealth Finals of the Concerto and Vocal Competition would take place. There, he would play with the resident ABC Orchestra. He would usually be accompanied by my mother or father, while the rest of us would gather around the radio at home, listening intently. Television only arrived in Australia in 1956 and we did not yet have a TV set. By the time David played in the concerto competition, because he had spent so many hours practicing them at home, we all knew those concertos by heart.
Surprisingly, given the fact that David really was an outstanding pianist at the time, he never actually won the Commonwealth Final. Nevertheless, every year was taken up with the excitement of these concerto competitions.
6
A SUGGESTION FROM ISAAC STERN
From the age of about twelve or thirteen, David’s personality started to change. He was no longer the kind little boy that he had been. The previously sweet, introverted, and sensitive child became increasingly arrogant and selfish. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the realm of music, where he became very dominating and hated to share the limelight. He used to say: “There should only be one star in the family,” leaving us in no doubt about whom he was talking.
Until then we had always played the piano happily side by side. But now when we sat down to practice together for competitions, David would start playing very loudly and very fast. Sometimes it was so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself. When I asked David to play a little slower or a little softer so I could keep up with him, he would do precisely the opposite and pound away furiously at the keys.
This kind of uncooperative behavior continued until it became impossible to play with him. For me this was heartbreaking: I had always imagined that even though David was giving astonishing solo performances, we could still carry on performing together as a team.
I was not the only target of David’s unpleasantness. When our little brother Leslie had first started to learn the violin, David often accompanied him on the piano. They really enjoyed playing together, and Leslie was especially delighted that his big brother was devoting time to him alone. But one day I remember listening with horror as David was accompanying Leslie, who was practicing. It sounded all wrong to me—out of time—which wasn’t like David. I remember thinking: “Heavens, why is he playing like that? He’s not supporting Leslie—he’s playing too loud and too fast.” Poor Leslie was only little and didn’t seem to notice what was happening, but it wasn’t long before it dawned on me: David was deliberately sabotaging Leslie’s efforts.
My mother and father also suffered from David’s odd behavior. When we went to the Concerto and Vocal competitions at the Capitol Theater, David started acting as if he no longer even wanted to know us. He walked ahead of my mother, father, and me as if he felt ashamed of us.
David even started behaving cruelly to his beloved animals. He had always loved playing with Bitzy, the good-natured neighborhood dog, who would often trot over to visit us. Then, suddenly, he took to kicking Bitzy—behavior that astonished us and made me feel terribly angry.
It is difficult to know whether David’s strange behavior was merely an early sign of a difficult adolescence, or an indication that something more serious was afoot. My parents never talked to me about David’s moods. Perhaps when they were alone they discussed their talented son. Maybe they simply concluded that geniuses are prone to difficult periods. I believe that David probably regarded all of us as competition and wanted to put us in our place so that he could be “the only star” in the house.
The way my parents spoiled David, in spite of his bad behavior, made growing up with him tough for the rest of us. As a reward for playing the piano so brilliantly he was always given one more lamb chop or an extra pint of milk. My father felt that David needed to be strong if he was to excel at playing the piano, and David had no problem obliging. He had such a voracious appetite that he could eat six lamb chops at a single meal.
Despite David’s moods, the relationship between him and my father continued to be close. D
avid was the apple of my father’s eye, and my father did everything to encourage him. If there was any spare money, it was spent on nice new clothes for David. The rest of us couldn’t help but be a little resentful of this special treatment, feeling that things should have been more equally shared.
My father’s preoccupation with David was particularly hard on me, because I desperately wanted him to recognize my achievements too. I took my Junior Certificate examinations at the age of fifteen and passed all nine subjects, from art to commercial studies. This was an above-average performance in Perth and I proudly raced home to show everybody. When I rushed up to my father and told him that I had passed my Junior Certificate he said, “Shhh, David’s practicing.” That was the only reaction I got. The next day at school I found out that all the other children’s parents had given them radios, clothes, and all sorts of presents for passing. But all I had received was a “Shhh, David’s practicing.”
I began to understand our situation better later in life. Books such as Carol Easton’s biography of English cellist Jacqueline du Pré and a psychological study called Nature’s Gambit by David Henry Feldman taught me how hard it can be for the other siblings to get enough attention when there is an exceptionally talented child in a family. It was especially so in our case, since we were all studying hard and learning musical instruments.
As he won praise on all sides, David’s arrogance grew. One particular incident in the spring of 1961 had quite an effect on him. Shortly before David’s fourteenth birthday in May, the American violinist Isaac Stern and the pianist Abbey Simon were on a tour of Australia. After hearing David perform at the West Australian State Final of the ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition, the two musicians were very impressed. They described David as highly talented and suggested that it might be a good idea for him to pursue his musical studies in the United States.
Stern and Simon were such celebrated personalities that their comments were taken up by the press and turned into feature stories. The music critic of the Perth Sunday Times, James Penberthy, wrote a prominent front-page article. Under the heading “He’ll Bring Honor to Perth,” the paper announced it was setting up a fund for David to send him to America. Initially David was quite upset by this article because it revealed that he sat on a homemade stool, that he couldn’t reach the pedals, and that his pant legs were too short. But he soon became very excited by all the media attention.
Many other papers followed the Sunday Times lead. Under the heading “Will He Be a Genius?” accompanied by a huge, half-page photo of my brother, a caption in one paper stated: “David Helfgott is already being hailed as a coming genius who could bring great credit to Australia. Two world-famous artists, Isaac Stern and Abbey Simon, have declared that David displays great promise and should go abroad to study.”
Another paper reported Simon as saying, “David should go to one of the great schools of music such as the Curtis Institute in America”—a reference to the famous Philadelphia music school founded in 1924 by Mary Bok in memory of her father Cyrus Curtis. Simon, who had also been a child prodigy, had himself studied at the Curtis Institute.
An especially glowing article appeared in Woman’s Day in July 1961. Entitled “Little Boy on Way to Fame,” it began: “Children, housewives, old people on an evening stroll often pause a little awed, outside a modest home in Highgate, Perth. From the home tumbles a tempestuous stream of music played with an intensity that moves everyone who hears. They are listening to a young pianist who could one day be one of Australia’s greatest musicians—fourteen-year-old David Helfgott … He is believed to be the youngest pianist ever to reach the finals of the ABC competition … David squirms with embarrassment when the conversation turns to him … He would have been horrified to know that after he appeared on TV many Perth housewives phoned the station to describe David’s hands as the most beautiful they had ever seen.”
The article by James Penberthy in the Perth Sunday Times, which started the whole ball rolling, also included a feature about the family. “The Helfgott family is rich in pride, talent, and happiness,” Penberthy wrote, “but they have barely enough money for the necessities of life. Proud papa, Peter Helfgott, a State Electricity Commission fitter, has a wife and five young children to support. Margaret, sixteen, who plays the piano with great dash, passed the Junior Certificate with nine subjects. Leslie, ten, plays Paganini on the violin without any teaching. Eight-year-old Susanna, also untaught, played some Rimsky-Korsakov on the piano. Baby Louisa, just nineteen months, only listens with interest to the others.
“How Polish-born Peter and Rae Helfgott keep their family happy, well-fed, dressed, and educated in their humble home, is quite beyond me,” Penberthy added. “Peter Helfgott told me: ‘We wanted to maintain some [musical] life in the house so we managed to keep up payments on the piano.’ The Helfgotts are with justification a proud family—they ask help from no one.”
After a while, my father went to the Perth Sunday Times office to find out how much money had been raised to send David to the United States. But hardly anything had come in. Although a donation had been sent from as far away as Canberra, and a prominent Perth businessman, Alec Breckler, had generously offered to help, the sum raised was far short of that needed. David’s move to America was therefore not a realistic option.
To suggest, as Shine does, that my father had “refused” David permission to go to the States, and to hint that it was what his family had been through during the Holocaust that had led him to make this irrational and unfair decision—one that would ultimately lead to David’s breakdown and institutionalization—is not only a terrible slur on my father but also indirectly on all Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
The whole thing was all in fact a case of misinterpretation. The media, taking their cue from the Sunday Times, wrongly reported or implied that Stern and Simon had actually made a concrete offer to David to study in the United States. In reality, they had merely praised his playing and suggested, in an off-the-cuff kind of way, that he should consider going abroad to study.
Isaac Stern was furious at the way Shine misrepresented what happened—in scene 21 of the published screenplay, the film refers to an “invitation” by Stern—and he was surprised that Scott Hicks had not even consulted him about this. Stern even told journalists in 1997, after Shine came out, that he had never made any firm offer to David Helfgott.
However, in 1961, the young David, at once arrogant and naive, and caught up in the frenzy of all the press attention, let his imagination run wild. He even convinced himself that he was actually going to live in Stern’s home in America.
James Penberthy and others in Perth musical circles, eager to put the city on the map as far as classical music was concerned, were very keen that David follow Simon and Stern’s advice. But while my father shared their hopes and enthusiasm, he also had to take account of parental concerns. He knew that David was incapable of looking after himself. He told those who were making an effort to raise funds that if they enabled the whole family to go to America, then he would have no objection, because we would be there to look after David. But as a father he couldn’t allow a young son—especially one with problems— to go off on his own and fend for himself on the other side of the world.
My mother, my brother, and my sisters all think my father was right, as do I. To suggest, as Shine does, that my father was in some way mean-spirited is totally unfair. Holding back David’s career was not in the least my father’s aim. He was extremely proud of his son and nurtured his talent in every way. He was David’s strongest advocate. But allowing any boy who had just turned fourteen to live by himself so far away without proper provisions being made for him would have been irresponsible, to say the least.
In David’s case, it would have been particularly inappropriate. He had never been abroad before; he was completely hopeless in practical matters; and he needed to be looked after, cooked for, and cared for. He was also by that time behaving rather erratically, alth
ough of course we did not know then that these may have been the first signs of a serious mental illness. My father’s attitude was proved correct: when David did go to London of his own volition four years later, he fell ill and ended up receiving psychiatric care.
In any case there simply wasn’t enough money available to finance the trip to America. Contrary to what is related in Shine, where my father and Mr. Rosen decide that David should have a bar mitzvah as a method of raising money for this trip, David had already had his bar mitzvah almost a year earlier, when he turned thirteen, the usual age for this ceremony. His bar mitzvah had nothing to do with “digging for gold,” as Mr. Rosen puts it in Shine, in one of several offensive references in the film to Jews or Judaism. My father may not have been an Orthodox Jew himself, but he still had a strong desire to hold onto the basic tenets of Jewish tradition and to pass them on to his children.
So, with insufficient money forthcoming with which to fund the trip, the whole American proposal inevitably came to nothing. However, the atmosphere created by the press, even though it had no real basis in fact, had raised David’s hopes sky high. I remember my father tactfully trying to explain all this to David. But my brother had been so excited at the prospect of going that he didn’t really take it all in, and, in part at least, blamed his father for the “offer” not materializing—as though it were my father’s fault that he didn’t have enough money to pay for David to go and live in America.
* * *
After the Isaac Stern episode and its aftermath, the relationship between David and my father became less close. We were still not sure, however, whether David’s gradual withdrawal from the family wasn’t simply the kind of difficult phase that many adolescents go through. I was becoming more independent myself at this time, and went to work in Melbourne— though there was of course a huge difference between my spending a few weeks in Melbourne, under the watchful eye of my grandparents, and the idea of David, who was two years younger than me and considerably less mature—he still could not even tie his own shoelaces—spending years alone on the other side of the world.
Out of Tune Page 5