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, in 1946? And that she made
recordings for the Remington label?
Maybe
information is scarce because most colleagues, friends and pupils
did take her advice just 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.
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.
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An
early picture of Hellen Airoff in the mid nineteen fifties.
(Private picture, courtesy Dr. Marco J. de Vries).
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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;
and there is 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 Holland
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.)
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Yehudi
Menuhin's letter of July 15th, 1987 to The Times.
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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.
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Helen
Airoff in the nineteen seventies. (Picture,
courtesy Dr. Marco J. de Vries).
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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.
R.A.B. June 3,
2005
Images
of Helen Airoff and Yehudi Menuhin's letter, and the details about
his visit to London (as published on the site of the Helen
Dowling Institute), courtesy Professor Dr. Marco J. de Vries.
