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When those who knew and loved Robert Helps and his music gather today to say goodbye, they'll be recalling his talent, wit, musical insight and devotion to friends and students.
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 3, 2002
Friends, colleagues, students and admirers of Robert Helps say goodbye today. They'll gather at the University of South Florida in Tampa for a memorial to celebrate his life with music, poetry and reminiscence. Among those planning to participate are soprano Bethany Beardslee, composer-pianist David Del Tredici, Florida Orchestra English hornist Joyce James, cellist Scott Kluksdahl and others.
Bob was a composer, pianist and teacher, and he touched many people with his music, including me. When I moved here a decade ago, I was somewhat in awe of him, especially after I heard a recital he gave in Miami in 1993.
The program included his own Quartet for piano, the Second Sonata by Roger Sessions -- Helps' onetime composition teacher -- plus a wide range of other works, many of them by young, unknown composers. He had a unique style at the keyboard, with technique that appeared to originate more in his upper arms than in his fingers, dashing off cascades of notes with aplomb. His playing struck me as something like an improbable cross between Rachmaninoff and Teddy Wilson, the great barrelhouse stride pianist.
Bob had a gift for bringing difficult modern works to life. His own music wasn't easy listening, but it was never complex just for the sake of complexity. There was a spun-sugar delicacy to the harmonies and a rhythmic momentum that, for all the uncompromising modernity, aimed to communicate.
Since Bob died in November of cancer at 73, I've made a point of listening to several recordings of his chamber and solo piano music, some of it played by him, some by others. The CRI label did well by him in recent years, releasing a number of Helps recordings. Among them are an all-Helps disc, his recording of the Sessions sonatas and New Music for the Piano, a reissue of a 1968 album in which he played works of American composers.
He could be quite a maverick in his choice of repertoire for recitals. In the 1990s, he set about championing a couple of relatively unknown 20th century British composers -- Arnold Bax and John Ireland -- in telling juxtaposition to the romantic pianism of Liszt and Chopin.
Running into Bob always brightened my day. Sometimes I would chat with him at Florida Orchestra concerts, often when a hot young pianist, such as Yefim Bronfman, was the soloist. Bob liked to keep up with who was making a splash in the music world, just as he himself made a splash back in the 1940s and '50s when he was one of the few pianists who could persuasively negotiate finger-busting works by the likes of Milton Babbitt and Sessions.
Bob had many friends in the orchestra, and he once told me, while discussing the composition of his Symphony No. 2, that he had individual musician friends in mind when he wrote various passages of the work. One movement amounted to a virtual homage to the wind section.
He had a way of demystifying the creative process that was wonderfully witty and down to earth. Here's how he began a program note on one of his longest, most complex works, Recollections for solo piano: "While reclining in my bathtub I thought of the title. . . ."
And Bob could be an effective provocateur, as in a droll memo he wrote to the powers that be at classical station WUSF-FM 89.7, spoofing their aversion to programming anything but musical wallpaper:
"Dear People, Is it absolutely necessary to broadcast every morning such a torrent of spine-tingling, nerve-shattering, teeth-chilling Baroque music? And so early in the day? Such irritating music should be reserved for off hours, i.e., 11 p.m. A dosage of more pabulum-oriented Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Roger Sessions, Aaron Copland, etc., would be far more tolerable."
During his 20 years at USF, Bob influenced countless younger musicians who, in many cases, aspired to a much different idiom than his. The annual BONK festival, which is heavy on electronics and computer music, usually features a few Helps piano pieces. This year's festival, which runs Tuesday through Saturday, has Drew Krause playing In Retrospect: Five Pieces for Piano and Corey Jane Holt in Recollections.
He was immensely popular on campus. He enjoyed organizing concerts of duo-piano music by candlelight on Valentine's Day. At rehearsals, he was an ever-supportive presence, gently guiding students in what to play and how to play it. With his long white hair and beard, peering at a score, he looked like a benevolent sheepdog.
I really enjoyed getting together with Bob to have lunch -- he was a bit of a gourmand -- and chew the fat about matters musical. I have an especially fond memory of one time he and Jeff Woodruff, artistic administrator of the orchestra, and I met over a meal to talk about an upcoming Brahms festival.
There was something about the way Bob, as someone who had performed almost all of Brahms' chamber music and had created a large body of work of his own, was capable of talking about the composer that gave his remarks rare authority.
"There's almost a complacency about his music, or a serenity, or an autumnal haze," he said. "Brahms has this serene flow which -- if I'm in the mood for it -- is really wonderful. And if I'm not in the mood, it drives me crazy."
One of the last lunches Bob and I had was two years ago, a few days before the Florida Orchestra premiered his Second Symphony. In retrospect, it was a prescient work, given his suggestion that its four movements follow the cycles of a person's life.
"My 70th birthday occurred in the middle of this," he said. "I do feel that reaching that age, even with the most optimistic projections, I don't necessarily have all that much time left. It did focus me in on the piece."
When I first heard the symphony, I had a hard time bringing myself to confront the dirge that takes up much of the final movement, called Forebodings, but now I prefer to remember how it winds up with a bang -- literally, a whip crack.
It was bracing, just like the man himself.
I miss Bob -- the gravelly "Helps here" that he answered the phone with -- but I feel lucky to have known him. His music will always be with us, and that's as good a legacy as anyone could ask.
-- The Robert Helps Memorial is at 2 p.m. today in Theatre 1 on USF's Tampa campus.