Introducing Helen Hopekirk…

In my recent post about the Scottish premiere (14 January 1889) of Charles Villiers Stanford’s Symphony No.3 ‘Irish’ in Edinburgh, I noted that at the same concert pianist, composer and teacher, Helen Hopekirk played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5.  I promised to present some details about her in a subsequent note.

Helen Hopekirk was born at 148 High Street, Portobello, Edinburgh on 20 May 1856. Her parents were Adam Hopekirk and Helen Croall. Adam sold pianos, ran a bookshop and a publishing business.  Helen went to school at Windsor Lodge Academy in Portobello where she had her first music lessons from a Miss Stone. Later, she attended the Edinburgh Institution for the Education of Young Ladies at 23 Charlotte Square.

During further musical study in Edinburgh, she was a pupil of Hungarian pianist George Lichtenstein (1827-1893) and the composer, teacher and conductor Alexander Mackenzie (1847-35). Her solo debut was on Monday 6 April 1874 at a concert given by the Edinburgh Amateur Orchestral Society. She performed the 2^nd and 3^rd movements of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No.1 in G minor and some sections of Schumann’s ‘Humoreske’, op.20.

After her father’s death in 1876, Helen enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatoire to study under Carl Reinecke (1824-1910). Additional disciplines included composition with Salomon Jadassohn (1831-1902), pianoforte with Louis Maas (1852-89) and counterpoint with Ernst Friedrich Richter (1808-79). During this time, she befriended fellow student George Chadwick (1854-1931) and briefly met Franz Liszt (1811-86).

Her concert debut was at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 28 November 1878 where she performed Chopin’s Concerto No.2 in F minor.  Returning home, her first concert at the Crystal Palace was on 15 March 1879 where she was the soloist in Camille Saint-Saens’s G minor concerto.  For the next few years Helen Hopekirk toured Europe and Britain to considerable critical acclaim.

In 1882, Helen married the Scottish business man, landscape painter and music critic William A. Wilson. He was very much a ‘modern man’ who managed her business affairs, concert planning as well as supervising their domestic arrangements.

The following year they both travelled America for a four-year tour. Her first American appearance was at the Boston Symphony Concerts on 8 December 1883 where she played the Saint-Saens’ G minor concerto. This was followed by her first New York recital on 27 December. 

In 1886 Hopekirk travelled back to Edinburgh before departing for Vienna (1887-91) for further study. This was originally to have been with Franz Liszt, but on his death, this was changed to Theodor Leschetitzky (1830-1915) During her time in Vienna she studied composition with Karel Navrátil (1867-1936), and orchestration with Richard Mandl (1859-1918). Shortly before she left Vienna, Hopekirk appeared at the Vienna Philharmonic.

After this, in 1892, Helen and her husband lived in Paris, where she taught pianoforte at her private studio and had further composition and orchestration studies with Mandl. One major outcome of this period was the impressive Concertstück for piano and orchestra. Returning to London in she gave several recitals there and in Edinburgh.

In 1897 her husband was injured in a taxi-cab accident in London which meant that he was unable to work and was less able to manage her affairs. In that year she was invited by American composer and academic and former student colleague George Chadwick to take up a post as teacher at the New England Conservatoire in Boston. Relinquishing her academic post in 1901, Helen taught at her home in Brookline, Massachusetts until 1939. 

In 1919, Hopekirk and her husband became American citizens but immediately returned to Scotland where she concertized in Glasgow and Edinburgh.  The following year they relocated to the United States for the final time. William Wilson died in 1926. Her final concert was at the Steinert Hall in Boston in 1939: she played a selection of her own compositions.  

Helen Hopekirk died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 19 November 1945, aged 89 years. She is buried in the Mount Auburn cemetery.

Pianistically, her style was regarded as a balance between brilliant technical execution and considerable refinement.  Her piano recitals would often feature her own works.

Helen Hopekirk’s musical compositions included a piano concerto (now lost), the Concertstück for piano and orchestra, several orchestral works, two violin sonatas, many piano works and more than 100 songs.  Her music was often infused with echoes of Celtic folksong. An important contribution to Scottish music was her collection of Seventy Scottish Songs which was published in 1905. This featured her realisations of the tunes and the provision of a piano accompaniment. Hopekirk was proud of her Scottish ancestry and set many native poets including Robert Burns (1759-96) and Fiona McLeod (William Sharp) (1855-1905). Much of this Scottish influence can be heard in her music, including the use of modal and pentatonic melodies, and the Scot’s Snap. Hopekirk’s music is romantic in tone, sometimes nodding towards impressionism and often coloured by her Scottish musical heritage.      

There is a fair amount of biographical material available on Helen Hopekirk. The main study is Dana Muller’s Helen Hopekirk (1856–1945): Pianist, Composer, Pedagogue. A Biographical Study; a Thematic Catalogue of her Works for Piano; a Critical Edition of her Concertstück in D minor for Piano and Orchestra (dissertation, University of Hartford, 1995). Earlier contributions include Allen G. Cameron: Helen Hopekirk: A Critical and Biographical Sketch (New York, 1885) and the Constance Huntington Hall and Helen Ingersoll Tetlow’s Helen Hopekirk (1856-1945), privately published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1954. There are the usual musical dictionary and encyclopaedia entries as well.

A good selection of Helen Hopekirk’s piano music is included on Toccata Classics (TOCC 0430) played by Gary Steigerwalt.  There are several compositions uploaded to YouTube including the Concertstück for piano and orchestra and Philip Sear’s performance of the MacDowell-esque piano piece Sundown.