HELMANN AND HIS HOBBIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 9

HELMANN AND HIS HOBBIES

ce ISTORICALLY, the stilted atmosphere in which it was considered barbarous to applaud a musical work between movements dates back only to the 19th Century. One reads in 18th Century letters that musical performances were free and easy. Audiences heard the first movement of a concerto; then came a discussion and perhaps the singing of a group of arias by a different composer, and after that the performance of the second movement. I believe that any spontaneous response that comes from deep feeling cannot be other than ,right." This was the reply of Aleksandr Helmann, the Russian-American pianist, in a discussioi with The Listener on a subject which is continually cropping up in New Zealand. "The less we have of what I call a ‘superficial, ritualistic, holy-holy cultural attitude’ ‘towards music the more I like it," he continued. "I think music is great fun, and I enjoy making it when the people are enjoying it too," The Listener asked him if he thought @ musician should be generous with his encores at the end of a performance. — "When both artist and audience are between them creating a spirit of enjoyment, the artist does not think of not playing for a little longer," he said. "At a farewell concert in Helsinki, my official programme ended at 10.0 p.m., but I played till 11.0. There is sometimes @ warm rapport in which music is in the very air, and the performer wants to keep it there. At Helsinki members of the audience swarmed up on to the stage and stood all round me. It was exhausting and noisy, though wonderfully intimate. We had a great time."

Aleksandr Helmann, who had just arrived in Wellington from Australia, was still talking about his experience of the recent floods in Taree, a nine and a-half. hours’ train journey from Sydney. "In 32 years of concert-playing this. was the first time I have had to cancel a concert, and it was one with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra," he said. Book-binder and Printer ~ By degrees the conversation got round to Mr. Helmann’s hobbies. Bookbinding is one that he has all too little time to indulge in. Helmann binds books of music-generally in the medieval manner, with two ropes on

the back, He first became interested in’ this craft’ when he found that he needed more permanent bindings of leather for some of his first editions of musical works. He learned the art from reading and from examining old psalters-"Modern binding looks slick, but it doesn’t wear well. I took for patterns psalters of parchment going back to the 15th Century." Another of his hobbies is printing "however unorthodox it may look." He has a hand press at his home in England and he has acquired some quaint old type faces. For his own amusement he has set up some of his own programmes and handbills for concerts. But he has had to give up that hobby to a great extent. "My wife is just as keen on_it as I am, and as I like to

complete a job once I start, we found that it meant both of us staying up till three in the morning, and, what with constant piano practice, it became too much." : Rarity in a Box In Helmann’s luggage is a long box marked, for the benefit of porters and others, "musical instrument." Inside is an 18th Century fretted clavichord, which he uses for practice in the confined space of ships’ cabins and hotel bedrooms. It was made in Nurnberg in 1730, and in every mechanical detail is similar to the instrument for which Bach wrote his Well-Tempered Clavier. "T acquired the clavichord,"’ he explain--ed, "so that I should become better ac-/-quainted with the spirit of Bach." _. The hobby he liked best of all, he explained, was! collecting 18th Century keyboard instruments. He has, as far as he knows, the only playable Mozart piano in the world, and it is very different from the modern product: "To hear Mozart’s piano music on this instrument gives one a completely different outlook. It supplies an appreciation of the music of the time. This piano has certain dynamic and _ interpretative problems that can be solved only by practice-problems that for years have been the subject of great discussions and great disagreements, It

has five and a-half octaves, and what we know to-day as the black notes are white and the white notes black. Played by a Cigarette "My clavichord is the same. Indeed all German keyboards were made in that manner till late in the 18th Century. It is bi-chord and the mechanism, which was invented by Andreas Stein, of Augsburg, is so responsive and so light to the touch that a cigarette will depress a key. And that, of course, makes pianissimo playing extremely difficult. There are no pedals for the feet, but two knee-pedals. "The tone quality is quite different from that of the modern piano, It is lovely and what I would call ‘shimmering. . The hammers are strange, The largest in the bass is about the size of a thimble and just like one, and made of bamboo. The striking -surface is covered with a piece of leatherno felt. When you sit down to play it, it has an almost incredible effect on people hearing it for the first time. Even a C Major chord sounds like the opening of something very serious and dramatic. I searched Europe. for 15 years before I found it. "These old instruments are a great help in getting a little closer to the old composers, I also have a "Beethoven piano, which is precisely like those which Mozart played-upon. It is a contemporary replica of the piano which Broadwood sent to Beethoven as a gift and upon which the composer wrote his last great sonatas. When preparing a Mozart composition for a concert, I work it up on the Mozart piano first, trying to get the real spirit of the composer," (Aleksandr Helmann’s next broadcast will be heard on September 7, when 1Y A will relay the first half of a public concert.)