Word: helfgott
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...Gibson. At No. 8 was Rieu's From Holland with Love. Poised just below the chart was his newest release, Strauss Gala. This impressive lineup has made Rieu, at least for the moment, one of the hottest acts in classical music--rivaling Luciano Pavarotti, Kathleen Battle, even David Helfgott, whose recording of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto returned to the top spot, ending the Dutchman's two-week stay in that position. Yet Rieu has never played a note in the U.S., and his albums have gone unreviewed by critics. He is the superstar nobody knows...
This fact hit me in the final scene of Shine, which is a true story, when the aged prodigy, whose name is David Helfgott, visits his late father's grave site. David says he feels nothing, and rightly so. His father was a royal bastard, forcing him to remain in his native Australia after being offered a scholarship to study in America and attempting the same strategy upon his acceptance at the Royal Academy in London...
...technical performance was wildly erratic, the phrasing disjointed, the rhythms unreliable. Most disconcerting was the absence of any notion of what the pieces were designed to convey; Helfgott played a lot of notes but not much music. The audience didn't mind. Each piece was greeted with a roaring standing ovation, the kind once accorded only to a Rubinstein or a Horowitz...
Summing up the next day, the Boston Globe's Richard Dyer wrote, "The sad fact is that David Helfgott should not have been in Symphony Hall last night, and neither should the rest of us." Shine director Scott Hicks disagrees, blaming "the guardians of the elite" for demanding too much of Helfgott. Gillian Helfgott's view is much the same. "I think there are probably people who are coming to see a man who has fought his way through the wilderness," she told a Boston press conference, from which her husband was notably absent. "But if they come for that...
Such sentimentality does no service to Helfgott--or to music--since it is plainly cruel to parade him before concert audiences. In Boston, on opening night, a devoted fan declared, "This is a tribute to the indomitable human spirit." Her companion's tart reply: "No, it isn't. It's a tribute to greed and the exploitation of someone's handicap." Both were right...