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David Helfgott | Biography
David  Helfgott was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1947. He showed  extraordinary pianistic ability from an early age, winning the state  finals of the ABC’s Instrumental & Vocal Competition six times.
At  age 17, David began studying with Alice Carrard, a former student of  Bartok and Istvan Thoman, himself a pupil of Liszt. Two years later,  David went to London to study at the Royal College of Music with  Cyril Smith, who described him as his most brilliant student in 25  years of teaching and likened him to Horowitz, both technically and  temperamentally.
David  won a number of awards at the College, including the Dannreuther  Prize for Best Concerto Performance for his triumphant performance of  Rachmaninov’s Third  Piano Concerto.  However, towards the end of his time in London, David faced increased  emotional instability and mental excitability, compounded by the  death in Perth of his mentor, writer Katherine Susannah Pritchard.
A  period of frequent hospitalization followed during the 1970s, but by  1976 David had moved to a halfway house where he stayed for six  years. The greatest crisis for David had been the loss of his inner  music, but he remembers the day the music came back: “The fog  lifted, I could hear again … I survived.”
David  was brought back to the public’s attention by Dr Chris Reynolds,  who owned Riccardo’s wine bar in Perth, where David performed on  Saturday nights. It was there he meet his future wife, Gillian, who,  with the support of promoter Mike Parry, helped David gradually  resume his concert career with concert performances in Perth and a  sell-out tour of Australia’s eastern states in 1986. This was  followed by a trip to Europe, with recitals in Germany and  Denmark.
David  triumphantly returned to an active life of concert-giving and  performance, and made a series of CDs, including the soundtrack of  the Oscar-winning film Shine,  which celebrates his remarkable and inspiring life. David’s  recording of the Rachmaninov Third was the number one selling CD in Australia, the United States and the  United Kingdom for many months. Both attained gold status.
In  October 1996, David played four sold-out concerts at the Sydney Opera  House, an unprecedented occurrence. A challenging world tour followed  the next year, with packed recitals and performances throughout the  US and the UK, concluding with David’s return to the Royal Albert  Hall in London, were he played the Rachmaninov Third to a capacity crowd and received a thunderous standing ovation.
Over  the next five years, David kept up his world touring, through Asia,  Africa, Japan, New Zealand and Europe, while also maintaining a busy  Australian schedule. David released four more CDs, including Brilliantissimo, Brave  New World,  and one featuring the Tchaikovsky Piano  Concerto No.1 and Rachmaninov’s Variations  on a Theme of Paganini,  two of David’s favourite works. However, the highlight release for  this year was In  Viva,  a disc containing two movements of the Mozart Piano  Concerto No. 24 from David’s prize-winning performance in Perth when he was  fourteen years of age.
In  2002, David was invited to represent Australia at the Beijing Music  Festival and in Guangzhou, while 2003 saw a triumphant tour of Europe  – particularly of Austria, where he completely won the hearts of  the Viennese.
One  of the major highlights of David’s career came in October 2004 when  the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia awarded him an  Honorary Doctorate of Music. His whole family was in attendance.
David  conquered Europe yet again in 2005 and 2006. In Italy, he played the  Rachmaninov Third in Montecatini Terme, where both Verdi and Puccini lived and where  David and Gillian were awarded the Key of the City. Then it was on to  sell-out performances of the concerto in Vienna and Zurich, plus many  recitals in Spain, Norway and Denmark. On 26 November 2006, David was  inducted into The Australian Walk of Fame.
In  2007 and 2008, David had extremely successful return tours of South Africa, New Zealand and Japan, and  major European tours. But his recital in Sydney in November at the  City Recital Hall gained the greatest accolades heard in the Hall in  recent memory.
The  year 2009 opened with David receiving a huge honour when a 2.7 metre  sculpture by the internationally recognized sculpture, John Van Der  Kolk, was dedicated to David and placed in the Bellingen Council Park  in recognition of David’s courage, contribution to music and his  work in the community.
In  June, David performed in Israel for the first time in both Jerusalem  and Tel Aviv as part of the Australian-Israel Cultural Exchange, and  then toured Turkey and Europe, with a very successful recital in  Vienna receiving one of the greatest ovations of David’s career. He  will return there in October 2010, as well as play in Luzern and  Denmark.
This  extraordinary  artist is continuing to receive the worldwide recognition that his  remarkable technical and interpretative genius deserves. His  continuing success comes as no surprise to David’s legion of  devoted admirers everywhere. They have long regarded his recitals as  transcending mere music-making. They are an affirmation of the  tenacity of the human spirit and imagination.