Eileen Joyce

Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG (1908–1991) was an Australian pianist whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years.

Her recordings made her popular in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly during World War II. At her zenith she was compared in popular esteem with Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn.Fred Blanks, review of Richard Davis ''Eileen Joyce: A Portrait'', ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 13–15 April 2001 When she played in Berlin in 1947 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, an eminent German critic classed her with Clara Schumann, Sophie Menter and Teresa Carreño. When she performed in the United States in 1950, Irving Kolodin called her "the world's greatest unknown pianist".Jeremy Siepmann,
''The Piano''
Accessed 1 December 2022.

She became even better known during the 1950s, when she played 50 recitals a year in London alone, which were always sold out. She also performed a series of "Marathon Concerts", playing as many as four concertos in a single evening. Her Mozart was described as "of impeccable taste and feeling", she was a Bach player "of commanding authority", and "a Lisztian of both poetry and bravura". Her playing of the second movement of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto in the films ''Brief Encounter'' and '' The Seventh Veil'' (both 1945) helped popularise the work. A 1950 biography of Joyce's early life became a best-seller and was translated into various languages. A feature film, '' Wherever She Goes'' (1951), was based on the book, but was much less successful.

Despite her fame, her name slipped from public sight after her retirement in the early 1960s. Her recordings have resurfaced on CD.

Biography

Early life and education

Eileen Joyce was born in Zeehan, a mining town in Tasmania. She was born in Zeehan District Hospital and not, as many reference works claim, in a tent. She frequently claimed her birthday was 21 November in either 1910 or 1912, but a search of Tasmanian birth registrations shows she was born on 1 January 1908. She was the fourth of seven children of Joseph Thomas Joyce (born 1875), grandson of an Irish immigrant, and Alice Gertrude May.Bach Cantatas website
/ref> One of her three elder sisters (all born in Zeehan) died shortly after birth, and one of her three younger brothers died at age two.

The family had moved to Western Australia by 1911. They lived firstly in Kununoppin and later in Boulder. Despite their poverty, her parents encouraged her musical development and she began music lessons at age 10.

She attended St Joseph's Convent School in Boulder where she was taught music by Sister Mary Monica Butler. When she was aged 13, her family's financial circumstances meant that Eileen had to leave school. However, they managed to find enough money to pay for piano lessons with a private teacher, Rosetta Spriggs (a great-grandpupil of Antonín Dvořák). She made Eileen known to a visiting Trinity College examiner, Charles Schilsky, a former violinist with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. Schilsky was extremely impressed with Joyce: he later wrote "There is no word to explain Miss Joyce's playing other than ''genius''. She is the biggest genius I have ever met throughout my travels".

He approached the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Perth and arranged for Eileen to be sent to Loreto Convent in Claremont, Perth, to continue her schooling. Her music teacher there was Sister John More. Joyce entered the 1925 and 1926 Perth Eisteddfods, winning the Grand Championship in 1926. Schilsky continued to make her name known, and wrote a letter to Perth newspapers urging her to be sent to Paris to study.

In May 1926, the Premier of Western Australia, Philip Collier, set up an "Eileen Joyce Fund" with the aim of collecting £1,000 to help Joyce's future career. In August 1926, Percy Grainger, on a concert tour, was introduced to Joyce by Sister John More. He heard her play, and then wrote an open letter to the people of Perth:

He suggested she would have the same celebrity as Teresa Carreño and Guiomar Novaes.

Grainger recommended she study with an Australian master so that her playing would not become "Europeanised" or "Continentalised", and in his view Ernest Hutcheson, then teaching in New York, was the best choice. A short time after Grainger left, Wilhelm Backhaus arrived for a tour of Western Australia. He also heard her and suggested the Leipzig Conservatorium, then regarded as the mecca of piano teaching, would be more suitable (Hutcheson himself had studied there).

From 1927 to 1929, she studied at the Leipzig Conservatorium, firstly with and later with Robert Teichmüller. There, she learnt unusual repertoire such as Max Reger's Piano Concerto and Richard Strauss's '' Burleske in D minor''. She then went to the Royal College of Music in London where, with assistance from Myra Hess, she studied under Tobias Matthay. She also had lessons with Adelina de Lara for a short period in 1931.

Career

On 6 September 1930, she made her professional debut in London at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert, playing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3. Her first solo recital in England was on 23 March 1931.Victoria Laurie, "Forgotten keys", '' The Weekend Australian'', 7–8 April 2001 In 1932, she attended Artur Schnabel's masterclasses in Berlin for two weeks. In 1933, she made the first of her many recordings. The session produced Franz Liszt's ''Transcendental Étude'' in F minor and Paul de Schlözer's Étude in A-flat, Op. 1, No. 2.

In 1934, for the Proms' 40th season, Joyce played Busoni's '' Indian Fantasy''. She became one of the BBC's most regular broadcasting artists, as well as being in demand for concert tours in the provinces. In 1935, she was a supporting artist for Richard Tauber.

Joyce was the first pianist to play Shostakovich's piano concertos in Britain – the First on 4 January 1936, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. She also played the Second on 5 September 1958, with the same orchestra, under Sir Malcolm Sargent, at the Royal Albert Hall.

In 1938, Eric Fenby said he was thinking of writing a concerto for her, but that did not happen. On 18 July 1940, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) presented a "Musical Manifesto" concert to raise funds, after its founder, Sir Thomas Beecham, said he could no longer afford to fund it. The author J. B. Priestley, a longtime supporter of the orchestra, made a speech, which was widely publicised and which helped attract public support. Three conductors – Sir Adrian Boult, Basil Cameron and Malcolm Sargent – took part, and Joyce played Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, under Cameron's direction. During the war she performed regularly with Sargent and the LPO, especially in blitzed areas. She was a frequent performer in Jack Hylton's "Blitz Tours" during the war,CD Historicals
/ref> and she appeared regularly at the National Gallery concerts organised by Dame Myra Hess.

Although small in stature, Joyce was strikingly beautiful, with chestnut hair and green eyes. She changed her evening gowns to suit the music she was playing: blue for Beethoven, red for Tchaikovsky,Live Performance Australia Hall of Fame
/ref> lilac for Liszt, black for Bach, green for Chopin, sequins for Debussy, and red and gold for Schumann.Peggy Chamber
Profile
''Women and the World Today'']. Accessed 1 December 2022.Profile
''Time Magazine''. Accessed 1 December 2022. She also arranged her hair differently depending on the composer – up for Beethoven, falling free for Grieg and Debussy, and drawn back for Mozart. Until 1940, she designed her own gowns, but in August she volunteered as a firewatcher, which revived her chronic rheumatism so, on the LPO tours, she had to wear a plaster cast encasing her shoulder and back. She bought gowns specially designed by Norman Hartnell to cover the cast, and she often wore Hartnell thereafter. Richard Bonynge was a music student in Sydney during her 1948 tour, and said: "She brought such glamour to the concert stage. We all used to flock to her concerts, not least because of the extraordinary amount of cleavage she used to show!".

She had numerous recital programs and over 70 concertos in her repertoire, including such unusual works as the '' Piano Concerto in E-flat major'' by John Ireland and Rimsky-Korsakov's Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor. In 1940, she made the first recording of the Ireland concerto, with the Hallé Orchestra under Leslie Heward, and was chosen to play it at a 1949 Proms concert with the LPO under Sir Adrian Boult, celebrating Ireland's 70th birthday. The performance was recorded and released commercially.

However, there were three concertos that Joyce played more than any others, and were her firm favourites: the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, and most of all, the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. She never played any other Rachmaninoff concertos.

She appeared with all the principal UK orchestras as well as many overseas orchestras. She toured Australia in 1936, during which she was the soloist at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra's first Celebrity Concert, conducted by William Cade. She toured in 1948, and performed the Grieg concerto at the gala opening concert of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, under Joseph Post. In June 1947, she appeared at Harringay Arena in the Harringay Music Festival with Sir Malcolm Sargent.

She had planned to tour the United States in 1940 and 1948, but both tours were cancelled, the first one on account of the war. She finally appeared in Philadelphia] and Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1950, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. She had earlier appeared with them in Britain in 1948, on the orchestra's first major overseas tour. While her Philadelphia concerts attracted excellent reviews, the New York critics were much less impressed. This was possibly due to the conservative repertoire she chose on Ormandy's strong advice (Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto and Prokofiev's 3rd), rather than the works she would prefer to have played (the Grieg concerto, Rachmaninoff's 2nd and Tchaikovsky's 1st). She was never particularly popular or even well known in the United States, and she never returned.

Her other tours abroad were to New Zealand in 1936 and 1958, France in 1947, the Netherlands in 1947 and 1951, and Germany in 1947, where she played for Allied troops. She was the first British artist for more than a decade to give concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. She toured Germany again in 1949 and 1958, Italy in 1948, Belgium in 1950 and 1952, South Africa in 1950, and Norway in 1950. She had planned to tour Sweden on that trip, but fell down a flight of stairs after performing the Grieg concerto in Oslo, and the remainder of her trip was cancelled. She did, however, visit Sweden in 1951 and 1954, Yugoslavia in 1951, visiting Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana, Brazil and Argentina in 1952, Finland in 1952, Spain and Portugal in 1954, the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1958, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries in 1958, and India and Hong Kong in 1960.

In November 1948, Joyce broke the previous record of 17 appearances at London's Royal Albert Hall in a single calendar year. She had often performed two concertos in a single concert and, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, she gave a series of "Marathon Concerts", in which she played up to four concertos in a single evening. For example, on 10 December 1948, in Birmingham, she played César Franck's '' Symphonic Variations'', Manuel de Falla's '' Nights in the Gardens of Spain'', Dohnányi's '' Variations on a Nursery Tune'' and Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor. On 6 May 1951 at the Royal Albert Hall she performed Haydn's D minor Harpsichord Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, John Ireland's Concerto in E-flat major, and Grieg's concerto, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, under conductor Milan Horvat. On another occasion, she played Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, John Ireland's concerto and Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto.

She expressed a new-found interest in the harpsichord, receiving lessons from Thomas Goff and, in 1950, she gave the first of a number of harpsichord recitals. In the 1950s, she also gave a series of concerts featuring four harpsichords, her colleagues including players such as George Malcolm, Thurston Dart, Denis Vaughan, Simon Preston, Geoffrey Parsons and Valda Aveling.

In 1956, Joyce was Gerard Hoffnung's first choice as soloist in Franz Reizenstein's parodic ''Concerto Popolare'', to be played at the inaugural Hoffnung Music Festival, but she declined, and the job went to Yvonne Arnaud. She appeared as soloist at Sir Colin Davis's debut as a conductor, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), on 22 September 1957, playing Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1. On 28 November 1957, she participated in the premiere performance of Malcolm Arnold's Toy Symphony, Op. 62, at a fund-raising dinner for the Musicians Benevolent Fund. The work has parts for 12 toy instruments, which were taken by Joyce, Eric Coates, Thomas Armstrong, Astra Desmond, Gerard Hoffnung, Joseph Cooper, and other prominent people, all conducted by the composer.Paul R. W. Jackson, The Life and Music of Sir Malcolm Arnold
/ref>

In 1960, during her tour of India, her Delhi recital was attended by the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. During that tour, which also included Hong Kong, she announced she was retiring, and her final recital was at a festival in Stirling, Scotland, on 18 May 1960, where she played two sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, Beethoven's '' Appassionata'' sonata, and works by Mendelssohn, Debussy, Chopin, Ravel, Granados and Liszt. She did, however, return to the concert platform a handful of times over the next 21 years, the first not until 1967, when she played Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the RPO conducted by Anatole Fistoulari, at the Royal Albert Hall. That was the work that had made her famous in the film ''Brief Encounter'' in 1945, and it was to be her last concerto performance. Also in 1967, she appeared with three other harpsichordists and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Neville Marriner.

In 1967, she started to foster the career of the ten-year-old Terence Judd. In 1969, she appeared alongside fellow Australian pianist Geoffrey Parsons in a two-piano recital at Australia House, London. In 1979, she gave a two-piano recital with Philip Fowke. She appeared again with Geoffrey Parsons on 29 November 1981 at a fund-raising concert at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. That proved to be her very last appearance as a pianist because another performance, scheduled in 1988, had to be cancelled).

In August 1981, Eileen Joyce served on the jury of the 2nd Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia (SIPCA), alongside Rex Hobcroft, Cécile Ousset, Abbey Simon, Claude Frank, Gordon Watson, Roger Woodward and others. In 1985, she conducted preliminary auditions in London for the 3rd SIPCA, and attended the competition in Sydney as Music Patron and deputy chairman of the jury. She gave Rex Hobcroft an anonymous donation of $20,000 for the competition. She was also Music Patron for the 4th SIPCA in 1988.

On 21 March 1991 she fell in her bathroom, fracturing her hip. She was taken to East Surrey Hospital, where she died on 25 March. On 8 April, she was cremated and her ashes were interred at St Peter's Anglican Church, Limpsfield, next to Sir Thomas Beecham. On 7 June, a memorial service was conducted at St Peter's Church.

Conductors

The list of conductors with whom Joyce worked includes: Ernest Ansermet, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Thomas Beecham, Eduard van Beinum, Sir Adrian Boult, Warwick Braithwaite, Basil Cameron, Sergiu Celibidache, Albert Coates, Sir Colin Davis, Norman Del Mar, Anatole Fistoulari, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Sir Alexander Gibson, Sir Dan Godfrey, Sir Hamilton Harty, Sir Bernard Heinze, Milan Horvat, Enrique Jordá, Herbert von Karajan, Erich Kleiber, Henry Krips, Constant Lambert, Erich Leinsdorf, Igor Markevitch, Sir Neville Marriner, Jean Martinon, Charles Münch, Eugene Ormandy, Joseph Post, Clarence Raybould, Victor de Sabata, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Carlos Surinach

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