“Robert Helps is not only
the pianist’s pianist
and the
composer’s composer,
but he is the
composer’s pianist
and the
pianist’s composer,
for, since his teen-age performance
of music that was deemed
unperformable, he has played
incomparably: compositions which
other pianists could not or would not
perform. The singular pianistic
mastery which he brought to these
performances moulds his own writing
for piano, from which pianists have
discovered resources of nuance,
rhythmic subtlety, dynamic control,
and sound which endow their own
playing with a new sensitivity and
sensibility. His chamber and
orchestral compositions are not
pianistic transcriptions, but the fresh
realization of the same awareness in
these non-pianistic media.
He long has been a legend
in his own time and he deserves it.”