Rise and Shine

With hot summer sun, flowers and bumblebees showing up, let’s enjoy an inspirational clip from the Oscar award-winning film “Shine“. Arguably, this scene shines the brightest of them all.

Australian pianist David Helfgott was the subject of the 1996 Oscar-awarded film Shine, which dealt with the pianist’s formative years and struggle with mental illness. He became known as a child prodigy after his father started teaching him the piano when he was five. At the age of nineteen, Helfgott won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied under the pianist Cyril Smith for three years. The awards he won at the RCM included the Dannreuther Prize for Best Concerto Performance for his performance of Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto, and the Marmaduke Barton Prize.