Some Critics Don’t Shine in Their Analysis of David Helfgott

Like so many other true music lovers--who are not so jaded by a need for technical perfection that we have lost the ability to feel, respect and be uplifted--I have been following the vilification of David Helfgott and his triumphal recital tour with an increasing sense of foreboding (“The Reality of ‘Shine’: An Image Distorted,” Calendar, March 22).

Times music critic Mark Swed reported that the “initial reports from Boston, where Helfgott began the North American segment of his tour March 4, were disturbingly alike. Critics attested to a pianist whose technique had evidently suffered from years of neglect imposed by his treatment and whose concentration was equally unreliable. [When] . . . Helfgott reached Lincoln Center last Tuesday . . . Terry Treachout, in the New York Daily News, described Helfgott as ‘profoundly mentally ill.’ ”

Thank you, Mr. Swed, for parroting others’ opinions and furthering a terrible injustice, rather than making the effort to attend a Helfgott recital and form an opinion of your own. By the way, please forward me a copy of Treachout’s mental health credentials to help substantiate Helfgott’s diagnosis.

What Swed and other critics have completely missed is that it is Helfgott’s triumph over such profound mental illness that is the issue here, not whether his performances are great, good or even poor art. You apparently have divorced yourself from the fact that music is an intensely emotional and spiritual mode of communication. It is not Helfgott’s performances alone that make them so uplifting and popular, but rather his performances in conjunction with the tremendous obstacles he has overcome in order to present them.

Who are you to judge the true beauty of Helfgott’s performances, which go far beyond the mere technical criteria that you hold so dear? Who are you to discount the accomplishments of a human being who has overcome such a serious illness?

Are Helfgott’s triumphs--and, by inference, the triumphs of so many others who have surmounted terrible disabilities to experience and enjoy life once again--somehow not worthy or uplifting solely because he might not have achieved perfection?