Donald Brook wrote a series of
books presenting attractive short studies or pen-portraits of a wide variety of
composers, musicians and authors. He had met many of these people and had a
chance to speak to them about their achievements and interests. I give the text
as written with a few notes. The author gives a good account of Hess’s life up
to 1946. After this time she gave many concerts in New York, at the Carnegie
Hall, and in 1951-52 she played at Casal’s Prades Festival. In 1960 Myra Hess
suffered a heart attack, with her last performance being given the following year.
She endured ill health until her death on 25 November 1965.
Hess is well represented on CD.
That said, she did not particularly enjoy making studio recordings, so some
critics suggest that her greatest achievement is exemplified by her live
concert recordings.
Hess is well represented on CD. That said, she did not particularly enjoy making studio recordings, so some critics suggest that her greatest achievement is exemplified by her live concert recordings.
Dame Myra Hess
WHEN MUSICIANS DISCOVER that they
can draw large audiences in almost any of the more civilized countries and
spend a great deal of their time on tour, they tend to become decidedly
cosmopolitan in their outlook, and lose interest in the musical life of their
native land. One audience, they feel, is much the same as another, and if the
fee is the same there is little to justify the giving of special attention to any
particular city. Dame Myra Hess has never adopted this attitude. The musical
life of her native London has always been a matter of great concern with her,
and in the magnificent series of concerts she has given at the National Gallery
throughout the war we have evidence of the great importance she attaches to the
provision of regular concerts of a high standard that are within the means of
everybody. But of those I shall have more to say in a moment.
Myra Hess was born at Hampstead
on February 25th, 1890, the youngest of four children. Her first couple of
years at music were much the same as those spent by thousands of other children
in this country: she started learning to play the piano at about five years of
age, and in due course took the junior examinations held by Trinity. College of
Music. At the age of seven she became a student at the Guildhall School of
Music and came under the influence of Julian Pascal and Orlando Morgan.
A scholarship then took her to
the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied the piano as her principal
subject under Tobias Matthay, one of the greatest teachers of the pianoforte
that this country has yet produced. His deep insight into the psychology as
well as the purely physical aspect of playing was probably responsible for Myra
Hess's early maturity as a professional pianist. Among her contemporaries at
the Academy were such people as Stanley Marchant (now the principal), Eric
Coates, W. H. Reed, Irene Scharrer, York Bowen and Arnold Bax. In his
autobiography, Sir Arnold Bax, now Master of the King's Music, says that he
still remembers Miss Scharrer and Dame Myra as "very small and eternally
giggling girls."
Miss Hess made her debut at the
age of seventeen when she gave a recital at the Aeolian Hall. This brought her
an engagement to play the Beethoven G major Concerto with Sir Thomas Beecham,
and its outstanding success established her almost immediately. Within a few
years she was touring all over Europe.
Her first appearance in America
was at a concert in New York in 1922. [1] Commenting upon her performance, W.
J. Henderson, whose death in 1937 robbed America of one of its finest critics,
wrote: "She is a great pianist without limitation," and went on to
speak of the imagination and delicate sensitivity revealed in the "subtly
wrought details of her readings and the singular aptness of her purpose." [2]
Since that time she has done a great deal in America, in fact there are few
symphony orchestras in the United States with whom she has not played at some
time.
Appropriate recognition of her
work came in 1936, when King George V made her a Companion of the Order of the
British Empire. Five years later she became a Dame Commander of the same Order.
Another honour that came to her in 1941 was the Gold Medal awarded by the Royal
Philharmonic Society: a distinction conferred only upon the greatest musicians.
Of her tours in France, Holland,
Germany and Austria, much could be said, but owing to the very small amount of
space available I can add only that her best performances have been of the
works of Bach, Scarlatti and Mozart, of which she has made a special study.
There are very few pianists of her sex in this country to-day who can equal her
in this type of music. The music of Schumann is another of her specialities,
and she has taken an active interest in all types of chamber music for many
years.
When the Second World War broke
out Dame Myra was obliged to abandon an extensive tour of America that had been
planned for the 1939-40 season. As my readers are well aware, all music stopped
in Great Britain during those dreary first months of the war, and it was a most
encouraging stimulus to all music-lovers when she returned to this country and
inaugurated that remarkable series of lunch-time concerts at the National
Gallery. They were just what everybody wanted, for the black-out made it
extremely difficult for thousands of London's suburban residents to go up to
town after dark. To give any sort of list of the immense range of works that
have been performed at these concerts would be quite impossible here, but
mention should, I think, be made of the performance of the complete series of
Mozart piano concertos, for which she called in Alec Sherman and his New London
Orchestra [3]. One of these special Mozart concerts was patronized by Her
Majesty the Queen, who received Dame Myra and Mr. Sherman during the interval
and congratulated them upon the excellent work they were doing.
It is noteworthy that up to the
autumn of 1944, no less than thirteen hundred concerts had been given at the
National Gallery in this series, and although fifteen thousand pounds had been
paid out in artists' fees, the sum of ten thousand pounds had been made for the
Musicians' Benevolent Fund. The canteen alone contributed a profit of four
thousand pounds to the concert fund. Throughout the worst periods of the
bombing of London these concerts were continued, though they ran at a loss
during the most difficult days. Contributions from music-lovers in America
helped to meet the expenses when attendances were small.
[1] Myra Hess’s public debut concert in New York (and the United States) took place on 17 January 1922, at the Aeolian Hall in Manhattan. Her recital included Schumann’s Papillons, four short sonatas by Scarlatti, and groups of pieces by Chopin and Debussy. Five days before the concert, Hess had given an “Intimate Recital” at the old Steinway Hall on Fourteenth Street for an invited audience.
[2] William James Henderson (1855-1937)
was an American musical critic and scholar. Initially, he was a reporter, then
the musical critic of The New York Times, and The New York Sun.
Sadly he committed suicide after the death of his friend and fellow critic in
1937.
[3] Alec Sherman was born in
London in 1907. His musical career began in 1930 as a violinist at the BBC
Symphonic Orchestra. He later founded the New London Orchestra, eventually
becoming its conductor in 1941. Between 1943 and 1945, he was co-director of
Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Later engagements as a conductor took him to Portugal, and
the series of weekly concerts at the Cambridge Theatre in London. Alec Sherman
died in 2008.
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