Eileen Joyce
Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG (died 25 March 1991) was an Australian pianist whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years.
Eileen Joyce
25 March 1991 (aged 83)
Piano, harpsichord
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.[1] 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.[2] When she performed in the United States in 1950, Irving Kolodin called her "the world's greatest unknown pianist".[3]
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".[3] 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.[2] 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[edit]
Early life and education[edit]
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.[4] She frequently claimed her birthday was 21 November in either 1910 or 1912,[5] but a search of Tasmanian birth registrations shows she was born on 1 January 1908.[4] (NOTE: It was common practice for birth dates to be registered as 1 January when the birth does not occur in a hospital and thus not registered on the exact date, but rather later, which means if 21 November was indeed her date of birth, she was likely born in 1907.) She was the fourth of seven children of Joseph Thomas Joyce (born 1875), grandson of an Irish immigrant, and Alice Gertrude May.[6] 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.[7]
Conductors[edit]
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, and Sir Henry J. Wood.
In a 1969 interview she said the greatest conductor she had ever worked with was Sergiu Celibidache.[7] She said "he was the only one who got inside my soul". In the late 1940s and 1950s, she and her partner Christopher Mann worked tirelessly to get Celibidache good engagements in Britain.
Films[edit]
With her partner Christopher Mann's influence, Joyce contributed to the soundtracks of a number of films. She is best known as the soloist in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, used to great effect in David Lean's film Brief Encounter (1945).
She also provided the playing for the piano music in the 1945 film The Seventh Veil, but this was uncredited in the film. This music again included the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto, and also Grieg's Concerto in A minor; as well as solo pieces by Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven (the slow movement of the Pathétique Sonata assumed a particular importance in the film).
She appeared in Battle for Music,[21] a 1945 docu-drama about the struggles of the London Philharmonic Orchestra during the war, in which a number of prominent composers and performers appeared as themselves.[7]
Arthur Bliss's music for the 1946 film Men of Two Worlds[22] (released in the US as Kisenga, Man of Africa, and re-released as Witch Doctor) includes a section for piano, male voices and orchestra, titled "Baraza", which Bliss said was "a conversation between an African Chief and his head men". Joyce played this for the film, with Muir Mathieson conducting. Bliss also wrote this out as a stand-alone concert piece, which Joyce both premiered in 1945 and recorded in 1946. This recording was more favourably received than the film was.[23][24]
She was in the 1946 British film A Girl in a Million,[25] in which she plays a part of Franck's Symphonic Variations. In 1947, her playing of Schubert's Impromptu in E-flat is heard in the segment "The Alien Corn" in the Dirk Bogarde film Quartet.[7] She was also seen as herself in Trent's Last Case (1952), playing Mozart's C minor Concerto, K. 491 at the Royal Opera House with an orchestra under Anthony Collins.[7]
Prelude: The Early Life of Eileen Joyce by Lady Clare Hoskyns-Abrahall was a best-selling 1950 biography that was translated into several languages as well as Braille. While it told the main elements of her story, it was heavily fictionalised in places. The book was dramatised for radio in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, Norway and Sweden.[2] Wherever She Goes was a 1951 black-and-white feature film based on the book, directed by Michael Gordon. Released in Australia under the title, Prelude, 1950, it was shot on location in Australia and in a studio in Sydney. Joyce's character was played by Suzanne Parrett, the only film she ever made<,[26]) and Parrett's performance double was Pamela Page. Joyce briefly appeared as herself at the start and end of the film, playing the Grieg concerto. The film was much less successful than the book on which it was based, although it was one of the very few Australian films made before 1970 to be given a (limited) release in New York.[27]
Tim Drysdale, son of artist Sir Russell 'Tas' Drysdale, played the role of Joyce's brother in the movie when he was age 11.[28]
Honours[edit]
In 1971, Joyce was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Cambridge. She was extremely proud of that and insisted on being referred to as "Doctor Joyce".[4] She was awarded similar honours by the University of Western Australia in 1979 and the University of Melbourne in 1982. Her memorial headstone refers to her as "Dr. Eileen Joyce".
In 1981, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to music.[29] While happy to accept the award, she made no secret of her disappointment that she was not made a dame.[4]
On 10 February 1989, a special Australian Broadcasting Corporation tribute concert to her was presented at Sydney Town Hall. Stuart Challender conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, with Bernadette Harvey-Balkus playing the first movement of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. Although now frail, Joyce flew to Australia to attend the concert, where she addressed the audience. The playwright Nick Enright interviewed her for the radio broadcast.[7]
Her portrait was painted by Augustus John, John Bratby, Rajmund Kanelba and others. A bronze bust by Anna Mahler stands at the Eileen Joyce Studio at the University of Western Australia in Perth. She was also the subject of photographic portraits by Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean and Antony Armstrong-Jones.[4]
The UWA Conservatorium of Music at the University of Western Australia, in Perth, named the main keyboard studio, which houses a collection of historical and notable keyboard instruments, the Eileen Joyce Studio.
Legacy[edit]
In the days of her greatest fame, the critical climate was still stuffy, and her mass appeal and her succession of different-coloured glamorous gowns, some designed by Norman Hartnell, provoked snobbish reaction and led to her being musically under-rated. Her surviving recordings show that such patronising judgements were very misplaced. She was a fine musician and technically very proficient. For example, her 1941 recording of the Étude in A-flat, Op. 1, No. 2 by Paul de Schlözer is considered unsurpassed. That brief, three-minute work is so demanding that few pianists even attempt it. Sergei Rachmaninoff was said to play it every morning as a warm-up exercise.[30]
Modern virtuoso pianists such as Stephen Hough have expressed amazement that Joyce is not more highly rated among great 20th century pianists than she is. In the foreword to Richard Davis's biography Eileen Joyce: A Portrait, Hough writes: "she displayed all the dazzle and scintillating virtuosity of many great players of the past ... she has to be added to the list of great pianists from the past".
In Zeehan, Tasmania, there is a small park called the Eileen Joyce Reserve. The University of Western Australia maintains a collection of her documents and some personal effects, as well as a collection of antique instruments in a facility named after her. The house where she grew up at 113 Wittenoom Terrace, Boulder, has a commemorative plaque.
In 2011, Appian Publications & Recordings issued a 5-CD box set, Complete Parlophone & Columbia Solo Recordings, 1933–45.[31] In 2017, Decca Eloquence released a 10-CD box set, The Complete Studio Recordings.[32] This release coincided with the publication of Destiny: The Extraordinary Career of Pianist Eileen Joyce, an examination of Joyce's career in concerts, films and recordings, by David Tunley, Victoria Rogers and Cyrus Meher-Homji.[33][34]
Personal life[edit]
On 16 September 1937, Joyce married Douglas Legh Barratt, a stockbroker. Their son, John Barratt, was born on 4 September 1939, the day after the start of World War II. The marriage failed and they separated.[1] Douglas Barratt served with the British Navy, and was killed on active service off Norway on 24 June 1942[35] when his ship HMS Gossamer was bombed and sunk. For reasons she never explained, Joyce always maintained he had died off North Africa but, in 1983, she corrected the record.
Her second partner was Mayfair Film executive Christopher Mann. They lived together from late 1942 until his death in 1978. Mann had previously been married to the Norwegian actress Greta Gynt, and had been Madeleine Carroll's publicist and manager.[7] Mann proved an unsympathetic stepfather to Joyce's son, John, and Joyce herself, between punishing touring schedules and bouts of ill-health, also found little time for him.[9] From the early age of three years and three months, John was sent to boarding school. Joyce's guilt over her neglect of her son, combined with overwork, contributed to a breakdown in 1953.[6] John himself was estranged from his mother from an early age, and he was left nothing in her will, the bulk of her estate going to her grandson, John's son Alexander.[4]
In 1957, Joyce and Christopher Mann bought Chartwell Farm (not the Chartwell historic home) and Bardogs Farm, Kent, from Sir Winston Churchill. Their home in London was bought by the actor Richard Todd.[7]
Joyce and Christopher Mann had always claimed they were legally married, but that did not occur until 1978, after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The wedding took place at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, with Joyce using the name Eileen Barratt.[36] Mann died at Chartwell on 11 December 1978, aged 75.[4]
Joyce experienced considerable ill health throughout her adult years, particularly severe rheumatism in her shoulders, which at one time necessitated the wearing of a plaster cast, and she also suffered from sciatica. Towards the end of her life, she developed senile dementia.[4] She died in 1991, aged 83, at East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, Surrey.[37]