Myra hess concerts
Myra remembered
Biography
Julia Myra Hess was born on 25 February to a Jewish family in Kilburn, London. The youngest of four children, she began playing the piano from an early age, starting lessons when she was five.
In , at the age of 12, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where she met her mentor, Tobias Matthay, who was to be instrumental in developing her talent.
Her public debut followed at the age of 17, when she played the Queen’s Hall, a famous classical music concert hall in central London, with the New Symphony Orchestra and its then conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham.
Myra Hess playing the piano in Room 36 at the National Gallery
© The National Portrait Gallery, London
During the next three decades she toured extensively and rose to prominence as a pianist of the highest rank.
But she is perhaps best-known today for the series of low-cost chamber music concerts which she initiated at the National Gallery at the outset of the Second World War.
The concerts were a great success and won her much affection from the British public. In , she was awarded the D.B.E.
Coffee flavored liqueur Myra Hess aus dem Jahr Past her mids, Hess had continued to grow as a performer and was free now to return to her concert career. McKenna, Marian: Myra Hess. The Hess family fortunes had fallen considerably, and Myra's father considered the venture foolish, so financing the event was no easy task.(Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in recognition of her wartime service.
Following the end of the National Gallery concerts in , Myra Hess continued her musical career and toured extensively. The s proved to be Dame Myra Hess' finest and has been regarded as her most sublime playing, recordings exist of many of her performances of the time; live Brahms' B-Flat Concerto with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic in In his discussion of Brahms recordings, David Dubal said that many musicians consider her performance the finest on record.
Myra's performances of Brahms Trios with Casals from the same decade are among the most celebrated chamber music recordings, as well as her incomparable recordings of Beethoven's Sonatas, Op. and Myra continually packed concert halls on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Contiguglia brothers, Myra's pupils
'When she finished Opus , there was total silence.'
The Contiguglia brothers, Myra's pupils
Transcript
The Contiguglia Brothers: I want to just say a few more words about turning pages for her because it was really an extraordinary experience.
One experience was turning when she did the Mozart E-Flat Concerto K with the New Haven Symphony, and I remember it was a memorable performance, simply beautiful. It stirred my emotions and made it very difficult to turn, but at the end of the finale she turned to the audience, because they wouldn’t let her leave, and she said ‘you know, the slow movement of this concerto was one of the most beautiful things that Mozart ever wrote, I would like to repeat it’, and so she went and played the slow movement again with the orchestra, and then she turned to me and said ‘that time it worked’.
She was so human and she seemed to value the impression that her page-turner had from her concert.
Myra hess biography Following the end of the National Gallery concerts in , Myra Hess continued her musical career and toured extensively. Translation: David Babcock. The pianist is still appreciated today as the organiser of the National Gallery Concerts. Family members were forbidden to ride, drive, or be driven anywhere on that day, and, after Myra's father and brothers attended synagogue on Friday night, the entire family sat down for the Sabbath-eve dinner, an event she recalled with pleasure throughout her life.Of course, I was so moved that I wondered whether I was ever going to be able to turn pages, but I managed. I like to think of Myra Hess as being a sort of platonic ideal. You know, she represented an artistry that all the rest of us aspired to. Of course we never can achieve what she was, but it is an ideal, a platonic ideal, for me; this is the way perfection is.
I remember that the last Carnegie Hall recital that we heard her perform, she did the last three Beethoven sonatas; Opus , Opus – one sonata was just more magisterial than the next.
During a time when concert programmes were still mixed, she had the courage to programme highly demanding chamber works by a single composer. He not only had the most important musical influence on Myra Hess, but also remained a lifelong friend and staunch supporter of his pupil. Frederick, the oldest son, became a partner in his father's business, manufacturing most of the many accoutrements—buttons, insignia, straps, braid, embroidery—for British military uniforms, the London Police, and the distinctively uniformed beefeater guards of the London Tower, as well as richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestments and altar cloths. It was during these years that she developed her profound knowledge of the chamber music repertoire.When she finished Opus there was total silence in that sold-out house, not one single clap, nobody said anything and nobody made a sound, and finally after an inordinately long time the entire audience rose to its feet, still silently, and then burst out into tumultuous applause. And that’s the effect a Myra Hess recital had, at least on an American audience.
Learn more about Myra Hess’s biography
Her last public appearance was at London’s Royal Festival Hall on 31 October , when she played the Mozart A Major Concerto, K, under Sir Adrian Boult.
Myra Hess died on 25 November
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