The
name of violinist Helen Airoff is known by just a few, mostly colleagues
and pupils, and a sporadic collector of rare violin recordings. But
even then, why is there so little known about violinist Helen Airoff,
except for the fact that she traveled to America on the same boat
- Ile de France - as Dame Myra Hess did, on December 16, 1949, returning
to the USA? And that she made recordings for the Remington label?
Maybe
information is scarce because most colleagues, friends and pupils
did take her advice for granted, considered her stimulating instruction,
and her drive to organize whatever was beneficial for them, a normalcy,
more or less. She was a caring person. It is known that she cared
for ill violoncellist Maurice Gendron at the end of his life.
Scarce are the
data and there are no recollections of live performances known to
me.
The liner notes on Remington 199-95 tell that Helen Airoff
made her debut as a child prodigy at the age of nine, in San Francisco.
She studied violin in Europe under Adolph Busch and 
Georges Enesco. She has made many
successful appearances as a solo violinist, and during World War II
she volunteered her services for G.I. concerts in Africa, Europe and
the Middle East. And that is where the short biography ends.
Teaching the
violin, that is what she mainly did, and in many instances this was
also giving lessons in life in order to guide the talents, and prepare
them for a career as a soloist, as a musician or as a teacher, but
above all as a human being. It is true that people easily herald a
king and a queen, but forget about the advocate and the role of the
servant, important though they are. On many occasions she must have
been right. It was Helen Airoff who suggested to producer Don Gabor
and violinist Georges Enesco to do the recording of Bach's Sonatas
and Partitas, despite the Rumanian maestro's age and state of
health. She was the instigator of the valuable legacy issued on the
Continental label.
|
|
|
An
early picture of Hellen Airoff in the mid nineteen fifties.
(Private picture, courtesy Dr. Marco J. de Vries).
|
Hellen Airoff's
two Remington recordings are the only known recordings that witness
her talent as a performer:
- Beethoven's
Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 8, performed with pianist Céliny
Chailley-Richez on R-199-95, released in 1952 and coupled
with Sonata No. 2 performed by Walter Schneiderhan - brother
of famous Wolfgang- with pianist Erich Berg;
- Mozart's
Violin Concerto No. 7, KV 271, performed with the Orchestra of
the Viennese Symphonic Society (Austrian Symphony Orchestra) and conductor
Kurt Wöss on R-199-46, released in 1953 but recorded much
earlier; coupled with orchestral pieces (Two Minuets and Gavotte).
It could be that
there are radio recordings or private recordings hidden in a vault
and nobody knows about their existence.
But the known Remingtons probably do fully illustrate Airoff's possibilities
and insight. The Beethoven Sonata is rather well recorded considering
that the recordings were made without the extra care of a producer
who wanted to make a high quality recording. Most Remington productions
were recorded in a few takes with hardly any splicing, as the budget
was very limited. Naturally critic Warren de Motte wrote about the
Beethoven Sonata: "Airoff and Chailley-Richez lack the polish
of their fellow artists." Nevertheless Helen Airoff does not
fail to communicate with her vivid playing. The recording also gives
proof of the artistry of
Céliny Chailley-Richez,
whose phrasing and subtle dynamics are simply wonderful. Helen Airoff
was about 36 years of age when the recording was made and Céliny
Chailley-Richez some 20 years her elder; it sounds like mother and
daughter are making music together, the piano taking the lead at times
and providing the fundament for the violin to play - after all, it
is a Sonata for Piano and Violin, and not the other way around.
It is reported
that Helen Airoff always questioned her profession, her artistry and
the meaning of her existence. And she never failed to impress, even
at the end of her life when she was severely ill with cancer. It was
then that psycho-oncologist Professor Marco J. de Vries from the
Netherlands was asked to visit her in London.
When they met in her apartment, the professor noticed in an adjacent
room, lying on a piano, a Guarneri violin, which obviously
had not been touched for a long time because the musician was not
able to move her right arm any longer. They talked intensively for
an hour and a half. Hellen questrioned the meaning of her life and
said that she had only played the violin. But when Dr. Marco de Vries
asked her about her students, she admitted that she always cared about
the pupils she had and that many of them had won international prizes
and were well known. She often let a room to a promising student for
some time. And when the student was practicing in the room on another
floor, she would listen while going about her own business, and she
would give advice, even by shouting from the floor below. Apparently
her selfesteem had suffered, already from her early youth. That is
why she did not fully recognize the importance of having taught so
many pupils.
Marco de Vries
later wrote: "When I left her London apartment, I was however
so impressed by her, that at the front door I decided that, if I ever
was going to found an institute of my own, I would give it her name."
Three weeks later Helen Airoff had died. (Her husband, Alan Dowling,
had predeceased her by four years.)
|
|
|
Yehudi
Menuhin's letter to The Times, July 15th, 1987.
|
On July 15th
1987 Yehudi Menuhin wrote a letter to The Times (London):
"I write these words to evoke the memory of a great soul and
a remarkable woman, who, in her passing, has left an irredeemable
void, as much in the hearts of her varied friends as she has in the
work and the musical legacy to which she still had so much to contribute.
Helen Airoff, born like me a Russian Jewish violinist, paralleled
in an uncanny way my own life. We shared three great masters, Louis
Persinger, the American, Georges Enesco, the Rumanian, and Adolf Busch,
the German.(...) Certainly no one living today understands the spirit
of Enesco's marvelous music, his opera Oedipus, his symphonies, chamber
music, songs, etc. or knew them as deeply as Helen. In this respect
alone her departing is tragic."
And he ended: "Far from being mourned as a public figure, she
will be profoundly missed by teachers and students and individuals
whose lives were expanded and enriched by her presence, not least
at my school." Signed, Yehudi Menuhin.
|
|
|
Helen
Airoff in the nineteen seventies. (Picture,
courtesy Dr. Marco J. de Vries).
|
Francine Trachier - first violin of l'Ensemble à l'abbaye
aux Dames, Caen - who studied with Helen Airoff, remembers the significance
of Helen Airoff as a teacher and as a human being:
In 1988 Professor
Dr. Marco J. de Vries founded the Helen Dowling Institute in
Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Aim initially was the research of psychological
factors that could possibly play a role in the onset and the development
of cancer. Yehudi Menuhin came to Rotterdam to perform with
other musicians in memory of Helen Dowling-Airoff in De Doelen Concert
Hall, to the benefit of the newly founded institute. The institute
is subsidized by the Dutch government and is now located in the city
of Utrecht.
Helen Airoff, born in 1916 in Russia (some sources mention New York
City as place of birth), died on July 12, 1987, in London.
Text written
by Rudolf A. Bruil. Page first published June 3, 2005.
Images
of Helen Airoff, of Yehudi Menuhin's letter, the details about the
visit of Prof. Dr. Marco J. de Vries to London (as published on the
site of the
Helen
Dowling Institute), courtesy Professor Dr. Marco J. de Vries.
Francine Trachier would like to meet some of her fellow students who
studied with Helen Dowling-Airoff .
