David Helfgott

David Helfgott ( born May 19, 1947 in Melbourne) is an Australian pianist. His life inspired the Australian film director Scott Hicks to the Oscar-winning film Shine - Sleeping in Light (1996).

Life

David Helfgott grew up as the son of Polish- Jewish parents and, after he had received from his father since the age of six piano lessons, discovered as a child prodigy. As a midget 8- year-old he held a competition despite drifting through seat and received a "Special Award for courage ." At the age of ten years he studied under Frank Arndt, a piano teacher from Perth, and has won numerous local competitions, both alone and with his older sister Margaret.

At 14, he got the offer to study in the U.S., but his father forbade him. 1966 at the age of 19, he won a scholarship to study at Cyril Smith at the Royal College of Music in London. Four years later, he appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, in which he scored a triumphant success with the 3rd Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff.

During his time in London symptoms occurred schizoaffective disorder days. Among other things, he suffered a severe nervous breakdown. In 1970 he returned therefore back to Perth, where he was a year later married his first wife, Clara. Shortly thereafter, he suffered another breakdown and was admitted to a mental hospital. The next ten years he remained in psychiatric treatment.

In the 1980s and 1990s Helfgott went to Australia and Europe on concert tours. In 1984 he married the astrologer Gillian Murray, with whom he now lives together in Happy Valley in New South Wales.

Helfgott preferred plays works of romantic music, such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky -Korsakov, and Robert Schumann.

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