Myra Hess – National Treasure
A new biography
By Jessica Duchen
Foreword by Stephen Kovacevich
Published by Kahn & Averill, 25 February 2025
‘Jessica Duchen writes with a great depth of musical understanding and genuine empathy for the neglected National Treasure that is Myra Hess. At last here is the biography she so richly deserves as Jessica Duchen gives Myra Hess a concert platform for a new audience.’ – Anne Sebba, biographer
Myra Hess – National Treasure, by Jessica Duchen, is published by Kahn & Averill on 25 February 2025, the 135th anniversary of the great British pianist’s birth. Publication in the US follows in April.
This definitive new biography, the first in nearly 50 years, follows Hess’s transformation from rebellious young woman into an inimitably powerful national heroine and international superstar. Through Duchen’s unprecedented research into revelatory, previously unpublished material from Hess’s correspondence and diaries, it encompasses her struggles for recognition and her stormy collaborations with towering musicians of her day, discusses rarely-told details of her personal life and tells the story of her National Gallery concerts and their controversial end. Her complex and exacting personality emerges at last from behind the myths, full of generosity, courage, humour and sheer, unfailing ‘chutzpah’.
Throughout World War II, Hess ran lunchtime concerts at London’s National Gallery. They became the stuff of legend, taking place every weekday for six and a half years, proving music’s power to support the human spirit in the darkest of times. Londoners queued along Trafalgar Square for admission and the Queen Mother attended several times. The music continued through the Blitz, transforming chamber music into a symbolic act of national resistance. For this achievement, Hess was awarded the DBE.
“I’ll never forget, after one of the worst London air raids through which nobody slept at all, I drove to the Gallery down streets filled with debris of all kinds. Houses were demolished everywhere. ‘There’ll be a small audience today,’ I thought, but we had an overflow house of 500 people – a little pale from lack of sleep, but listening to our music, serenity returning to their minds and their faces. They had come, through streets littered with broken glass and reeking with dust and smoke, to get the spiritual strength more vital to them than physical rest – the healing power of music.”
Myra Hess was born into a religious Jewish family in Victorian north London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music with the renowned pedagogue Tobias Matthay. As a woman seeking to build a performing career before World War I, she faced a struggle for recognition, enjoying her first real breakthrough in the Netherlands, but often finding herself judged by critics’ preconceptions of how female pianists supposedly played.
“The c[ritic]s can drown in their baths (if they take any).”
At home, a clash with her father led her to seek alternative ways of building a substitute family of friends. Stardom ensued when she reached the US in 1922. Soon, with America at her feet from Carnegie Hall to Beverly Hills, her beloved transcription of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring capturing the public imagination, and British artistic luminaries, politicians and royalty flocking to her UK performances, Hess seemed unstoppable, despite the arduous demands of touring.
“There are not more female pianists because most women are too sensible to wish to spend their lives on trains.”
During the war and through the National Gallery concerts, she became an unsung activist, helping refugee musicians from Nazi-occupied countries to find their feet in Britain. The National Gallery concerts, bringing live music to all comers at low cost – one shilling – while artistic life was circumscribed by the exigencies of war, powerfully impacted the future of music in the UK, including the formation of the Arts Council in 1946.
“IT IS SAID SOMETIMES THAT MUSIC IS A FORM OF ESCAPE, but the experience of these years has made us understand that it is infinitely more IMPORTANT THAN THAT.”
Hess encountered innumerable personal challenges, including some disastrous medical misdiagnoses. Though warm and giving, she did not hold back when faced with betrayal, cruelty or deception, or when others failed to meet the ferociously high standards she set for herself. A sociable woman who disliked being alone, she sacrificed her personal life in her determination to dedicate herself to music.
“I’m afraid I would be too earnest about marriage, and in this business there is only one thing one can be really earnest about. That is playing the piano. One sacrifices a great deal, but there are compensations.”
After the war Hess resumed her annual American tours, was the first pianist to perform at the Royal Festival Hall and made some of her greatest recordings. With declining health, she found fulfilment through teaching, her pupils including Stephen Kovacevich, Yonty Solomon, the Contiguglia twins and Ann Schein. Yet by her last years, even her closest friends scarcely dared to stand up to her.
“She was not the girl next door.” – Stephen Kovacevich
About MYRA HESS – NATIONAL TREASURE:
• The first new biography of Dame Myra Hess since 1976.
• The author, a noted music critic and author, was a pianist herself.
• Published by Kahn & Averill on 25 February 2025 – Hess’s 135th birthday – ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and, in November, the 60th anniversary of Hess’s death.
• Draws upon revelatory, previously unpublished material from Hess’s correspondence and postwar American tour diaries.
• Tells the story of the National Gallery Concerts’ creation, content and controversial end.
• Demonstrates Hess’s determination during World War II to help refugees from the Nazis.
• Places Hess in the context of her times, looking at how her eras shaped her and how she influenced the future of musical life in Britain.
• Shows Hess as an exacting individual who valued spiritual, moral, political, artistic and personal integrity and who embodied the change she wished to see.
• Reveals her stormy and inspiring collaborations with musicians such as Arturo Toscanini, Willem Mengelberg, Bruno Walter, Pablo Casals and Wilhelm Furtwängler and her friendships with colleagues including Howard Ferguson, Jelly d’Arányi and Sidney Griller.
• Looks at the runaway success of her transcription of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.
• Explores her studies with Tobias Matthay and the influence of Carl Friedberg, a pupil of Clara Schumann and Brahms.
• Details her connections with the theatrical, literary and artistic worlds of early 20th-century London and the US.
• Discusses rarely told aspects of her personal life, including an apparent jilting by Arnold Bax and lifelong enmity with the pianist Harriet Cohen.
• Includes in-depth interviews with her surviving pupils.
• Foreword by Stephen Kovacevich, Hess’s star pupil. Introduction by composer Nigel Hess, her great-nephew.
Praise for MYRA HESS – NATIONAL TREASURE
‘Jessica Duchen writes with a great depth of musical understanding and genuine empathy for the neglected National Treasure that is Myra Hess. At last here is the biography she so richly deserves as Jessica Duchen gives Myra Hess a concert platform for a new audience. It’s a terrific achievement. Surely Hess, who did so much in wartime London to bolster courage and culture by giving concerts at the National Gallery, should now be on the fourth plinth opposite the Gallery?’
– Anne Sebba, biographer
‘I loved reading this affectionate, elegant and informative biography of one of the greatest figures in British musical history’ — Sir Stephen Hough, pianist and author
‘Jessica Duchen’s biography of Myra Hess restores to us a great pianist in all her complex glory, complete with her dedication, her struggles with nerves, her probing musicianship, her personal courage in the face of illness, her gift for friendship, and her sense of fun. A sympathetic, balanced and rounded portrait.’ — Susan Tomes, pianist and author
‘Myra Hess was not only a major artist and a riveting personality; she also lived through uniquely fascinating times. In this eminently readable biography, Jessica Duchen brilliantly evokes both a powerful and attractive character, and the eras she inhabited. A sympathetic and thoroughly researched study of a musical legend.’ – Steven Isserlis, cellist and author
‘Packed with colourful anecdotes and musical insights, this biography is a tour-de-force, revealing the real Myra Hess beyond the myths’ – Tasmin Little, violinist and broadcaster
‘An engrossing read bringing fresh perspectives on a remarkable musician and on the 20th-century cultural backdrop from which she emerged’ – Fiona Maddocks, music critic of The Observer