Myra Hess By Her Friends: edited by Denise Lassimonne

My father was an inveterate collector of recordings of pianists. He was born in the 1920s (we have very long generations in my family), so most of these are on record – from 78s to LPs – although in his later years, he reluctantly acquired a few cassette tapes and CDs. His reluctance was not particularly because of his wariness for more modern technology, but rather because the Golden Age pianists he loved so much were still only available for gramophone. 

Of course, much has been written about both the unique sound quality of records, an the ritual of playing them. I remember the sound system tucked away in the corner of the living room, a resplendent oak-veneer cabinet that we children were not permitted to touch, lest we destroy needles, mechanism or worst of all, the records themselves. A small corner of me still feels somehow illicit and daring when I place an LP on my own player.

What this did, though, was to make me realise, even as a small child, that this was music that mattered, that was worthy of one’s time and attention. Myra Hess was a particular favourite for my father, in fact one of his top two – the other was Solomon, who he saw live on the pianist’s New Zealand tour in 1954, an experience that forever remained a treasured highlight of his life. Hess’s status at the top of the pyramid was partly what she played, given my father’s love of Beethoven and Brahms, but also because of how she played. He loved the strength of her contact with the keys, her attention to structure, the warmth and solidity of her sound. And it was also because he clearly admired her as a person.

A volume such as Denise Lassimonne’s collection of recollections from the friends of Myra Hess, written in memoriam, is never going to be a deep probe into the psyche of a performer. It is an act of friendship, a way of keeping the connection alive; it must be read as this. It is a mix of the personal and the musical, summoning an era already losing its currency when the book was published in 1966. The list of contributors is an illustrious one, from Irene Scharrer in her opening essay on Hess as a child, through such persons as Sir Adrian Boult and Joyce Grenfell, to W.K.C. Guthrie’s address as Public Orator of Cambridge University on the conferment of Hess’s honorary doctorate. This last is splendidly given in both Latin and English, as is still tradition; Myra Hess’s response noting that she is among the first women to receive this honour is not without a trace of steel. Denise Lassimonne herself, having lived with their mutual teacher Tobias Matthay for some time, contributes a chapter on the relationship between Hess and Matthay, or “Punkey”, as she called him. Matthay, from all the literature on him, was clearly an extraordinary and holistic teacher, something demonstrated through this paragraph:

“Punkey bequeathed another precious legacy to his pupils. Whenever he was with us in the artists’ room, his last injunction before we stepped onto the platform was ‘Enjoy the music!’ That inspired phrase saved us from many possibly disasters; and Myra used to say that when she suffered from nerves, as all great artists do, she would repeat to herself the magic words and a lifeline was cast and clung to, enabling her to throw herself into the very centre of the music shedding all nervousness in waste land.”

Another chapter that is a highlight for me is Howard Ferguson’s description of the National Gallery Concerts and their inception. It touches on the immense amount of work that had to be done behind the scenes for these to continue, programming, performers, and the occasional scramble to relocate in the face of bombing. Only once did the concerts take place outside the Gallery, when a time-bomb landed in the building; another time, the concert was moved to a far-flung room when a bomb was discovered in wreckage nearby. The concerts took place over exactly six and a half years – 1,698 concerts in total – to audiences ranging from the royal family to families to servicemen on leave. While the programming was very much of its time – Ferguson speaks of the series “presenting the complete literature of first-rate chamber music” – the extent of Hess’s achievement cannot be overestimated.

Hess’s response to the Public Orator of Cambridge reminds me of Lena Ashwell’s plea, and hope, for change thirty years earlier, after WWI. And again, her words feel timely, as yet again we slide perilously close to resuming the comfortable mantles of earlier musical times, and ignore the doorway to change:

“Since Elizabethan days there has probably never been such a demand for serious music as there is today. Not only in England but all over the world it is evident that this demand cannot be satisfied by the conventional series of concerts, which financially are beyond the great majority of people. Yet how important it is that a way should be found to enlarge the scope of public music-making. In times as unsettled as our own, music can have a profound influence for good. It is unfettered by the barrier of words, and therefore it is one of the great forces that can bring people together in mind and spirit.
How is this consummation to be achieved? At the moment it is difficult to give the answer. We must hope that the forces of habit and prejudice in the musical world will gradually give way to a more enlightened view of our present needs. This reformation may take time; but perhaps it will come about in the same happy way in which this University has found it possible to reconcile tradition with the claims of emancipated womanhood.”