Chopin or Shine-ola?

David Helfgott comes to Boston

by Lloyd Schwartz

I confess, I was curious. I didn't care for Shine (which I found icily manipulative), and I find the accompanying soundtrack CD and David Helfgott's recording of the Rach 3 (as characters in the film keep calling Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto to prove they're musicians) feeble. Still, something in me wanted to be present at sold-out Symphony Hall for Helfgott's first North American appearance and the launching of his 18-concert "Celebration of Life" tour. But I'm sorry I went. I can't remember being so thoroughly depressed by a public event.

I suppose the press-ticket situation ought to have been a tipoff. No press comps -- that was the word from the publicity director of the national tour. "Everyone was welcome to share the joy of David's celebration," she told me, but they "didn't need press" for a sold-out tour. This also suggests a desire on the part of Helfgott's handlers for no serious critical evaluation. And now that I've shared David's joy, I can't blame them. Neither the movie nor the bestselling CDs (Billboard's No. 1 Classical and No. 2 Crossover albums) prepared me for the pathetic incompetence of Helfgott's playing.

Helfgott himself is an endearing figure. He came bounding out of the wings, wearing a white "puffy" shirt with ruffled cuffs (like the one Jerry Seinfeld was so embarrassed to wear in the episode about his appearance on The Tonight Show). He trotted to the center of the stage to greet the applause, then immediately sat down and began his brief program (an hour and a half, including the intermission).

Mendelssohn's Andante and Rondo Capriccioso revealed his erratic sense of rhythm. Like a talented amateur, he could handle most of the notes, but the faster he played, the dicier that handling became. What was most startling was the lack of any real "touch" or "sound." Except when he played very loud, the notes were quite hard to hear. Like Glenn Gould, or Pablo Casals, he sings -- or groans, or growls -- along with the music. The quieter the playing, the louder the vocals. People in the audience giggled; couples elbowed each other.

The poignant Chopin Étude, Opus 10 No. 3, was mainly too fast and monochromatic, and since it had no color, it had no poetry. The middle was a muffled muddle. Helfgott got more giggles in the Chopin F-minor Ballade, when he kept scratching his side with his right hand, simian-fashion (when he wasn't waving his arm about as if he were conducting). The pedaling muddied the playing. This was a Ballade with so little narrative urgency, the audience interrupted with applause before it was over. He stood up, acknowledged the applause, then played the coda as if he were starting a new piece. People around me were confused. The other misplaced applause came after the first movement of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, but since the only way anyone who wasn't familiar with this piece could have known it had more than one movement was to buy a $15 souvenir program (the free handout had no musical information beyond the titles), the mistake seemed excusable.

Chopin was followed by Liszt: the brief though difficult concert étude Un Sospiro (pretty enervated) and the familiar Second Hungarian Rhapsody, which sounded half improvised (à la Chico Marx) but lacked the quality it needs most -- momentum. The Waldstein, the only piece scheduled for the second half of the program, was actually rather plausible in its broadest outlines -- some of the right ideas, if not always the right notes. The high notes here, as in the Liszt, had a twinkling if disembodied prettiness. The last movement, though, lurched from one rhythm to another, Helfgott hitting a stone wall just when you thought he was getting into the swing of things. There were three encores: a playfully bouncy folk-song invention (no one I knew could identify it), a Rachmaninov prelude, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble-Bee, which was such a seminal moment in Shine that it here got its own round of applause after the first couple of bars.

People behind me felt this all as a human celebration. Certainly Helfgott, grinning and leaping up from his chair to receive his applause, shaking hands with front-row wellwishers, seemed to be having a ball. I think he had no sense of how badly he'd played. But is this a triumph over an infirmity or merely a cashing in on it? During intermission, a friend of mine was relieved to find someone who shared his dismay. "It makes me queasy," he remarked. "It's not a concert, it's a freak show."