Eileen Joyce
Encyclopedia
Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG
(1 January 1908 – 25 March 1991) was an Australia
n pianist
whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years.
Her recordings made her popular internationally (less so in the USA) 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
. 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". 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 Eileen 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.
, 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), son of an Irish
immigrant, and Alice Gertrude May. 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 Eileen: 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. She entered the 1925 and 1926 Perth Eisteddfods, winning the Grand Championship in 1926. Schilsky continued to make her name known, and wrote a long letter to the 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 Eileen's future career. In August 1926, Percy Grainger
, on a concert tour, was introduced to Eileen Joyce by Sister John More. He heard her play, and then wrote an open letter to the people of Perth: "I have heard Eileen Joyce play and have no hesitation in saying that she is in every way the most transcendentally gifted young piano student I have heard in the last twenty-five years. Her playing has that melt of tone, that elasticity of expression that is, I find, typical of young Australian talents, and is so rare elsewhere". 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 Max Pauer and later with Robert Teichmüller
. Here she learned 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.
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, the day her famous compatriot Dame Nellie Melba
died in Sydney. In 1932 she attended Artur Schnabel
's masterclasses in Berlin
for two weeks.
In 1933, she made the first of her many recordings. This session produced Franz Liszt
's Etude de Concert in F minor and Paul de Schlözer
's Etude in A flat, Op. 1, No. 2. Her recording of the latter piece can be heard on this YouTube link.
In 1934, for the Proms' 40th season, she played Busoni
's Indianische Fantasie. 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
.
Eileen 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; and the Second
on 5 September 1958, with the same orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent
, at the Albert Hall.
In 1938, Eric Fenby
said he was thinking of writing a concerto for her, but this 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 long time 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 Eileen 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, and she appeared regularly at the National Gallery concerts organised by Dame Myra Hess.
Though small in stature, Joyce was strikingly beautiful, with chestnut hair and green eyes. Because of a then-common prejudice against pianists with British-sounding names, her advisors had long urged her to adopt a name with a continental flavour, but she stubbornly refused. Perhaps partly in compensation, but perhaps simply as a natural expression of herself, she enjoyed and exploited the glamour of celebrity. She changed her evening gowns to suit the music she was playing: blue for Beethoven, red for Tchaikovsky, lilac for Liszt, black for Bach, green for Chopin, sequins for Debussy, and red and gold for Schumann. She also arranged her hair differently depending on the composer - up for Beethoven, falling free for Grieg and Debussy, and drawn back for Mozart. The critics sneered, but her audiences loved it. Up 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 he 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 by John Ireland
and Rimsky-Korsakov
's concerto. 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 celebrating Ireland's 70th birthday, with the LPO under Sir Adrian Boult. This performance was also recorded and released commercially.
However, there were three concertos that Eileen 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 studied the 3rd Concerto but, far from being unable to play it, she simply did not like it.
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
; and in 1948, during which she 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; 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), 1949 and 1958; Italy
in 1948; Belgium
in 1950 and 1952; South Africa
in 1950; Norway
in 1950 (she had planned to tour Sweden on this trip, but she 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
(now in Serbia
), Zagreb
(now in Croatia
), and Ljubljana
(now in Slovenia
); 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, Eileen 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, 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
, Raymond Leppard
, Geoffrey Parsons
and Valda Aveling
.
In 1956 she was Gerard Hoffnung
's first choice as soloist in Franz Reizenstein
's Concerto Popolare, to be played at the inaugural Hoffnung Music Festival. 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. This work has parts for 12 toy instruments, which were taken by Eileen Joyce, Eric Coates
, Thomas Armstrong, Astra Desmond
, Gerard Hoffnung, Joseph Cooper
, and other prominent people, all conducted by the composer.
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. This 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
. This proved to be her very last appearance as a pianist (another one was scheduled in 1988 but 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
, and Roger Woodward
. 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. Other musicians also interred at the same churchyard are Frederick Delius
and his wife, Norman Del Mar
, Jack Brymer
and Beatrice Harrison
.
, 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
, 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. 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.
'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, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134309/ 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.
Arthur Bliss
’s music for the 1946 film Men of Two Worldshttp://us.imdb.com/title/tt0038736/ (released in the USA 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". Eileen Joyce played this for the film, with Muir Mathieson
conducting. Bliss also wrote this out as a stand-alone concert piece, which Eileen Joyce both premiered in 1945 and recorded in 1946. This recording was more favourably received than the film was.
She was in the 1946
British film A Girl in a Million, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038562/ 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. 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.
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 in places ludicrously fictionalised. It was dramatised for radio in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, Norway and Sweden. Wherever She Goes
was a 1951
black-and-white feature film based on the book, directed by Michael Gordon
. It was shot on location in Australia. Eileen Joyce's character was played by Suzanne Parrett (in the only film she ever made), and Parrett's performance double was Pamela Page. Eileen Joyce briefly appears 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.
. She was extremely proud of this, and insisted on being referred to as "Doctor Joyce". In 1979 and 1982, she was awarded similar honours by the University of Western Australia
and the University of Melbourne
respectively. Her memorial headstone refers to her as "Doctor Eileen Joyce".
For her services to music, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George
(CMG) in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1981. While happy to accept the award, she made no secret of her disappointment that she was not made a dame.
On 10 February 1989, a special Australian Broadcasting Corporation
tribute concert to her was presented at the 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, Eileen Joyce flew to Australia to attend the concert, where she addressed the audience. The playwright Nick Enright
interviewed her for the radio broadcast.
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
.
) provoked snobbish reaction and led to her being musically underrated. Her surviving recordings show that such patronising judgments were very misplaced: she was a fine musician and a technically magnificent pianist. For example, her 1941 recording of the Étude in A flat, Op. 1, No. 2 by Paul de Schlözer
is considered unsurpassed. This 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.
Modern virtuoso pianists such as Stephen Hough
have expressed amazement that Eileen 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 Memorial Park. 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 Wittenoon Terrace, Boulder
, has a commemorative plaque.
. The marriage failed and they separated. Douglas Barratt served with the British Navy, and on 30 April 1942 (or 24 June 1942), he was killed on active service off Norway when the ship he was on, HMS Gossamer, was blown up. For reasons she never explained, Eileen Joyce always said 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 1970. They both claimed they were legally married, but there is no documentary evidence of this. Mann had previously been married to the Norwegian actress Greta Gynt
, and had been Madeleine Carroll
's publicist and manager. Mann proved an unsympathetic stepfather to Eileen Joyce's son John Barratt, and Eileen herself, between punishing touring schedules and bouts of ill-health, also found little time for him. From the early age of three years and three months, John was sent to boarding school. Eileen's guilt over her neglect of her son, combined with overwork, contributed to a breakdown in 1953. John himself developed severe psychiatric problems, owing in part to his feelings of abandonment from a very young age. He 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.
In 1957, Eileen 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
.
Eileen Joyce experienced considerable ill health throughout her adult years, particularly severe rheumatism in her shoulders, which at one time necessitated a plaster cast, and sciatica. Towards the end of her life, she suffered from senile dementia.
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
(1 January 1908 – 25 March 1991) was an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years.
Her recordings made her popular internationally (less so in the USA) in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; at her zenith she was compared in popular esteem with Gracie Fields
Gracie Fields
Dame Gracie Fields, DBE , was an English-born, later Italian-based actress, singer and comedienne and star of both cinema and music hall.-Early life:...
and Vera Lynn
Vera Lynn
Dame Vera Lynn, DBE is an English singer-songwriter and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II. During the war she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops...
. When she played in Berlin in 1947 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, an eminent German critic classed her with Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...
, Sophie Menter
Sophie Menter
Sophie Menter was a German pianist and composer who became the favorite female student of Franz Liszt. She was called l'incarnation de Liszt in Paris because of her robust, electrifying playing style and was considered one of the greatest piano virtuosos of her time.Sophie Menter was born in...
and Teresa Carreño
Teresa Carreño
María Teresa Carreño García de Sena was a Venezuelan pianist, singer, composer, and conductor.Born into a musical family, she was at first taught by her father, then by Mathias, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Anton Rubinstein and her talent was recognized at an early age...
. When she performed in the United States in 1950, Irving Kolodin
Irving Kolodin
Irving Kolodin was an American music critic and music historian.-Biography:Irving Kolodin was born in New York City, New York. He wrote for the New York Sun from 1932 to 1950 and for the Saturday Review starting in 1947. He was best known for his popular Guide to Recorded Music...
called her "the world's greatest unknown pianist". 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
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
's 2nd Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
in the films Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
and The Seventh Veil
The Seventh Veil
The Seventh Veil is a 1945 British melodrama film made by Ortus Films, a company established by producer Sydney Box, who here released through General Film Distributors in the UK and Universal Pictures in the United States.-Plot:...
(both 1945) helped popularise the work. A 1950 biography of Eileen Joyce's early life became a best-seller and was translated into various languages; a feature film Wherever She Goes
Wherever She Goes
Wherever She Goes is a 1951 Australian feature film that tells the early part of the life story of pianist Eileen Joyce.-Synopsis:Eileen Joyce is born on the Tasmanian coast and becomes fascinated with music after hearing a man named Daniel play a mouth organ...
(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
Eileen Joyce was born in ZeehanZeehan, Tasmania
Zeehan is a town on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia. It lies southwest of Burnie. At the 2006 census, Zeehan had a population of 845. It is part of the Municipality of West Coast....
, a mining town in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
. 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), son of an Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
immigrant, and Alice Gertrude May. 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
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
by 1911. They lived firstly in Kununoppin
Kununoppin
Kununoppin is a small town in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. The town is located on the Nungarin-Wyalkatchem Road and in the Shire of Trayning local government area, north east of the state capital, Perth, Western Australia...
and later in Boulder
City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder
The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a Local Government Area in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, about east of the state capital, Perth. The City covers an area of , and its seat of government is the town of Kalgoorlie; all but 244 of the city's population live either in...
. 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
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
). 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 Eileen: 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
Loreto Convent, Claremont
Loreto Convent was a Catholic convent which operated as a girl's school in Claremont, Western Australia between 1901 and 1976.-History:Loreto Convent was founded by the Catholic Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1901, following their purchase of the Osborne Hotel in 1987.In 1963 the senior...
in Claremont, Perth, to continue her schooling. Her music teacher there was Sister John More. She entered the 1925 and 1926 Perth Eisteddfods, winning the Grand Championship in 1926. Schilsky continued to make her name known, and wrote a long letter to the Perth newspapers urging her to be sent to Paris to study. In May 1926, the Premier of Western Australia
Premier of Western Australia
The Premier of Western Australia is the head of the executive government in the Australian State of Western Australia. The Premier has similar functions in Western Australia to those performed by the Prime Minister of Australia at the national level, subject to the different Constitutions...
Philip Collier
Philip Collier
Philip Collier was Premier of Western Australia for nine years, the longest ever term for an Australian Labor Party premier....
set up an "Eileen Joyce Fund" with the aim of collecting ₤1,000 to help Eileen's future career. In August 1926, Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
, on a concert tour, was introduced to Eileen Joyce by Sister John More. He heard her play, and then wrote an open letter to the people of Perth: "I have heard Eileen Joyce play and have no hesitation in saying that she is in every way the most transcendentally gifted young piano student I have heard in the last twenty-five years. Her playing has that melt of tone, that elasticity of expression that is, I find, typical of young Australian talents, and is so rare elsewhere". He suggested she would have the same celebrity as Teresa Carreño
Teresa Carreño
María Teresa Carreño García de Sena was a Venezuelan pianist, singer, composer, and conductor.Born into a musical family, she was at first taught by her father, then by Mathias, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Anton Rubinstein and her talent was recognized at an early age...
and Guiomar Novaes
Guiomar Novaes
Guiomar Novaes was a Brazilian pianist noted for individuality of tone and phrasing, singing line, and a subtle and nuanced approach to her interpretations...
. Grainger recommended she study with an Australian master so that her playing would not become "Europeanised" or "Continentalised", and in his view Ernest Hutcheson
Ernest Hutcheson
Ernest Hutcheson was an Australian pianist, composer and teacher.Hutcheson was born in Melbourne, and toured there as a child prodigy. He later travelled to Leipzig and entered the Leipzig Conservatorium at the age of fourteen to study with Carl Reinecke and Bernhard Stavenhagen, a pupil of Franz...
, then teaching in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, was the best choice. A short time after Grainger left, Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus was a German pianist and pedagogue.Born in Leipzig, Backhaus studied at the conservatoire there with Alois Reckendorf until 1899, later taking private piano lessons with Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt...
arrived for a tour of Western Australia. He also heard her and suggested the Leipzig Conservatorium
Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre
The University of Music and Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig is a public university in Leipzig . Founded in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn as the Conservatory of Music, it is the oldest university school of music in Germany....
, 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 Max Pauer and later with Robert Teichmüller
Robert Teichmüller
Robert Teichmüller was a German concert pianist and music educator.He studied piano and music theory with Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory where he later became a faculty member in 1897, promoted to professor in 1908. He became one of the most influential piano teachers of his time...
. Here she learned unusual repertoire such as Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
's Piano Concerto and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Burleske in D minor. She then went to the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where, with assistance from Myra Hess
Myra Hess
Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...
, she studied under Tobias Matthay
Tobias Matthay
Tobias Augustus Matthay was an English pianist, teacher, and composer.-Biography:Matthaw as born in London in 1858 to parents who had come from northern Germany and were naturalised British subjects...
. She also had lessons with Adelina de Lara
Adelina de Lara
Adelina de Lara OBE was a British classical pianist and composer.-Early life:She was born Lottie Adelina Preston in Carlisle, Cumberland on 23 January 1872 to parents George Matthew Tilbury of Southampton and Anna de Lara. Her grandfather was the Spanish Count Laurent de Lara...
for a short period in 1931.
On 6 September 1930 she made her professional debut in London at a Henry Wood
Henry Wood
Henry Wood was a British conductor.Henry Wood may also refer to:* Henry C. Wood , American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient* Henry Wood , English cricketer...
Promenade Concert
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
, playing Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
's Piano Concerto No. 3
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Prokofiev)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26 is the best-known concerto by Sergei Prokofiev. It was completed in 1921 using sketches first started in 1913.-Composition and performances:...
. Her first solo recital in England was on 23 March 1931, the day her famous compatriot Dame Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
died in Sydney. In 1932 she attended Artur Schnabel
Artur Schnabel
Artur Schnabel was an Austrian classical pianist, who also composed and taught. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura...
's masterclasses in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
for two weeks.
In 1933, she made the first of her many recordings. This session produced Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
's Etude de Concert in F minor and Paul de Schlözer
Paul de Schlözer
Paul de Schlözer was an obscure Polish or Russian pianist and teacher of German descent. He was possibly also a composer, but the only two works attributed to him may have been written by Moritz Moszkowski....
's Etude in A flat, Op. 1, No. 2. Her recording of the latter piece can be heard on this YouTube link.
In 1934, for the Proms' 40th season, she played Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
's Indianische Fantasie. 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
Richard Tauber
Richard Tauber was an Austrian tenor acclaimed as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. Some critics commented that "his heart felt every word he sang".-Early life:...
.
Eileen Joyce was the first pianist to play Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's piano concertos in Britain - the First
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)
The Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra, Op. 35, was completed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1933 and premiered the same year by the composer at the piano and the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Despite the title, it is a true piano concerto rather than a double concerto in...
on 4 January 1936, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation and one of the leading orchestras in Britain.-History:...
under Sir Henry Wood; and the Second
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Shostakovich)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102, by Dmitri Shostakovich was composed in 1957 for his son Maxim's 19th birthday. Maxim premiered the piece during his graduation at the Moscow Conservatory...
on 5 September 1958, with the same orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
, at the Albert Hall.
In 1938, Eric Fenby
Eric Fenby
Eric William Fenby OBE was an English composer and teacher who is best known for being Frederick Delius's amanuensis from 1928 to 1934. He helped Delius realise a number of works that would not otherwise have been forthcoming....
said he was thinking of writing a concerto for her, but this 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
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, said he could no longer afford to fund it. The author J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
, a long time supporter of the orchestra, made a speech, which was widely publicised and which helped attract public support. Three conductors – Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
, Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron, CBE was an English conductor. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, the son of a German immigrant family. His birth name was Basil George Cameron Hindenberg. -Career:...
and Malcolm Sargent - took part, and Eileen Joyce played Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
's Piano Concerto in A minor
Piano Concerto (Grieg)
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, was the only concerto Grieg completed. It is one of his most popular works and among the most popular of all piano concerti.-Structure :The concerto is in three movements:...
(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
Jack Hylton
Jack Hylton was a British band leader and impresario.He was born John Greenhalgh Hilton in the Great Lever area of Bolton, Lancashire, the son of George Hilton, a cotton yarn twister. His father was an amateur singer at the local Labour Club and Jack learned piano to accompany him on the stage...
's "Blitz Tours" during the war, and she appeared regularly at the National Gallery concerts organised by Dame Myra Hess.
Though small in stature, Joyce was strikingly beautiful, with chestnut hair and green eyes. Because of a then-common prejudice against pianists with British-sounding names, her advisors had long urged her to adopt a name with a continental flavour, but she stubbornly refused. Perhaps partly in compensation, but perhaps simply as a natural expression of herself, she enjoyed and exploited the glamour of celebrity. She changed her evening gowns to suit the music she was playing: blue for Beethoven, red for Tchaikovsky, lilac for Liszt, black for Bach, green for Chopin, sequins for Debussy, and red and gold for Schumann. She also arranged her hair differently depending on the composer - up for Beethoven, falling free for Grieg and Debussy, and drawn back for Mozart. The critics sneered, but her audiences loved it. Up until 1940 she designed her own gowns, but in August she volunteered as a firewatcher, which revived her chronic rheumatism
Rheumatism
Rheumatism or rheumatic disorder is a non-specific term for medical problems affecting the joints and connective tissue. The study of, and therapeutic interventions in, such disorders is called rheumatology.-Terminology:...
, 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
Norman Hartnell
Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell, KCVO was a British fashion designer. Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to HM The Queen 1940, subsequently Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother...
to cover the cast, and she often wore Hartnell thereafter. Richard Bonynge
Richard Bonynge
Richard Alan Bonynge, AO, CBE is an Australian conductor and pianist.Bonynge was born in Sydney and educated at Sydney Boys High School before studying piano at the Royal College of Music in London. He gave up his music scholarship, continuing his private piano studies, and became a coach for...
was a music student in Sydney during her 1948 tour, and he 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 by John Ireland
John Ireland (composer)
John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer.- Life :John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Manchester, into a family of Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 70 at John's birth...
and Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
's concerto. In 1940 she made the first recording of the Ireland concerto, with the Hallé Orchestra
The Hallé
The Hallé is a symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It is the UK's oldest extant symphony orchestra , supports a choir, youth choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI...
under Leslie Heward
Leslie Heward
Leslie Heward was an English composer and conductor.He was particularly associated with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Halle....
, and was chosen to play it at a 1949 Proms concert celebrating Ireland's 70th birthday, with the LPO under Sir Adrian Boult. This performance was also recorded and released commercially.
However, there were three concertos that Eileen Joyce played more than any others, and were her firm favourites: the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, the Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)
The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between November 1874 and February 1875. It was revised in the summer of 1879 and again in December 1888. The first version received heavy criticism from Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky's desired pianist....
, and most of all, the Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
Piano Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
. She never played any other Rachmaninoff concertos. She studied the 3rd Concerto but, far from being unable to play it, she simply did not like it.
She appeared with all the principal UK orchestras as well as many overseas orchestras. She toured Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1936, during which she was the soloist at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra was founded as a 17 player radio ensemble in 1936, in Adelaide, South Australia. The orchestra reformed in 1949 as the 55 member South Australian Symphony Orchestra. It reverted to its original and present title, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in late 1974, and...
's first Celebrity Concert, conducted by William Cade
William Cade
William Richard Cade was an Australian violinist and conductor, the founding conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra....
; and in 1948, during which she performed the Grieg concerto at the gala opening concert of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the smallest of the six orchestras established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation .-Activities:...
, under Joseph Post
Joseph Post
Joseph Mozart Post OBE was an Australian conductor and music administrator. He made an unrivalled contribution to the development of opera-conducting in Australia and was, in Roger Covell's words, the 'first Australian-born musician to excel in this genre'...
. In June 1947 she appeared at Harringay Arena
Harringay Arena
Harringay Arena was a sporting and events venue on Green Lanes in Harringay, North London, England. Built in 1936, it lasted as a venue until 1958.-Construction:...
in the Harringay Music Festival with Sir Malcolm Sargent.
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
She had planned to tour the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1950, with the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
under Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
(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
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's "Emperor" Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 5 (Beethoven)
The Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, by Ludwig van Beethoven, popularly known as the Emperor Concerto, was his last piano concerto. It was written between 1809 and 1811 in Vienna, and was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven's patron and pupil...
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
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
in 1936 and 1958; France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1947; the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in 1947 and 1951; Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
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), 1949 and 1958; Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in 1948; Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
in 1950 and 1952; South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
in 1950; Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
in 1950 (she had planned to tour Sweden on this trip, but she fell down a flight of stairs after performing the Grieg concerto in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, and the remainder of her trip was cancelled); she did, however, visit Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
in 1951 and 1954; Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
in 1951, visiting Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
(now in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
), Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
(now in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
), and Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
(now in Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
); Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
in 1952; Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
in 1952; Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
in 1954; the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1956 and 1958; Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
and other Scandinavian countries in 1958; and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
in 1960.
In November 1948, Eileen 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
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
’s Symphonic Variations
Symphonic Variations (Franck)
The Symphonic Variations , M. 46, is a work for piano and orchestra, written in 1885 by César Franck. It has been described as "one of Franck's tightest and most finished works", "a superb blending of piano and orchestra", and "a flawless work and as near perfection as a human composer can hope to...
, Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Nights in the Gardens of Spain is a piece of music by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla...
, Dohnányi
Erno Dohnányi
Ernő Dohnányi was a Hungarian conductor, composer, and pianist. He used the German form of his name Ernst von Dohnányi for most of his published compositions....
’s Variations on a Nursery Tune
Variations on a Nursery Tune (Dohnányi)
The Variations on a Nursery Tune, Op. 25, is a piece for piano and orchestra by Ernő Dohnányi. It is subtitled For the enjoyment of humorous people and for the annoyance of others....
and Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor. On 6 May 1951 at the Royal Albert Hall she performed Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
’s D minor Harpsichord Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, John Ireland’s Concerto in E flat, and Grieg’s concerto, with the Philharmonia Orchestra
Philharmonia Orchestra
The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...
, under conductor Milan Horvat
Milan Horvat
Milan Horvat is a Croatian conductor. From 1969 until 1975, he was head of the newly created Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra...
. On another occasion, she played Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
's Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Chopin)
The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, is a piano concerto written by Frédéric Chopin in 1830. It was first performed on 11 October of that year, in Warsaw, with the composer as soloist, during one of his "farewell" concerts before leaving Poland....
, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, John Ireland's concerto and Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto.
She expressed a new-found interest in the harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
, 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
George Malcolm (musician)
George Malcolm CBE was an English harpsichordist and conductor.Malcolm's first instrument was the piano, and his first teacher was a nun who recognised his talent and recommended him to the Royal College of Music. Malcolm went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford...
, Thurston Dart
Thurston Dart
Robert Thurston Dart , was a British musicologist, conductor and keyboard player. From 1964 he was Professor of Music at King's College London....
, Denis Vaughan
Denis Vaughan
Denis Vaughan is an orchestral conductor most famous for his role as the driving force behind the creation of the United Kingdom's National Lottery. He is a campaigner for wider access to arts and culture for young people, and promotes the health benefits of music, the arts and sport...
, Simon Preston
Simon Preston
Simon John Preston CBE is an English organist, conductor, and composer.- Early life :He attended the Canford School in Wimborne in Dorset. Originally a chorister at King's College, Cambridge, he studied the organ with C. H...
, Raymond Leppard
Raymond Leppard
Raymond "Def" Leppard, CBE is a British conductor and harpsichordist.He was born in London and grew up in Bath, where he was educated at the City of Bath Boys' School, now known as the Beechen Cliff School...
, Geoffrey Parsons
Geoffrey Parsons (pianist)
Geoffrey Penwill Parsons AO OBE was an Australian pianist, most particularly notable as an accompanist to singers and instrumentalists...
and Valda Aveling
Valda Aveling
Valda Rose Aveling OBE was an Australian pianist, harpsichordist and clavichordist. Her repertoire was very wide, including composers as diverse as William Byrd, Jan Sweelinck, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Béla Bartók....
.
In 1956 she was Gerard Hoffnung
Gerard Hoffnung
Gerard Hoffnung was an artist and musician, best known for his humorous works.- Early years :Born in Berlin, and named Gerhard, he was the only child of a well-to-do Jewish couple, Hildegard and Ludwig Hoffnung...
's first choice as soloist in Franz Reizenstein
Franz Reizenstein
Franz Theodor Reizenstein was a German-born British composer and concert pianist. He left Germany for sanctuary in Britain in 1934 and went on to have his career there, including teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music and Boston University, as well as performing.-Life and work:Franz...
's Concerto Popolare, to be played at the inaugural Hoffnung Music Festival. She declined, and the job went to Yvonne Arnaud
Yvonne Arnaud
Yvonne Arnaud was a French-born pianist, singer and actress.Germaine Yvonne Arnaud was born in 1892. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 9, studying piano under Alphonse Duvernoy and other teachers...
. She appeared as soloist at Sir Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
's debut as a conductor, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national 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
Malcolm Arnold
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...
’s Toy Symphony, Op. 62, at a fund-raising dinner for the Musicians Benevolent Fund. This work has parts for 12 toy instruments, which were taken by Eileen Joyce, Eric Coates
Eric Coates
Eric Coates was an English composer of light music and a viola player.-Life:Eric was born in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire to William Harrison Coates , a surgeon, and his wife, Mary Jane Gwynne, hailing from Usk in Monmouthshire...
, Thomas Armstrong, Astra Desmond
Astra Desmond
Astra Desmond CBE was a British contralto of the early and middle twentieth century.-Early years:Astra Desmond was born Gwendolyn Mary Thompson, in Torquay, England. She was educated at Notting Hill High School and Westfield College, where she was a classical scholar...
, Gerard Hoffnung, Joseph Cooper
Joseph Cooper
Joseph Elliott Needham Cooper, OBE , pianist and broadcaster, best known as the chairman of the BBC's long-running television panel game Face the Music.- Early career :...
, and other prominent people, all conducted by the composer.
In 1960, during her tour of India, her Delhi recital was attended by the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of India
The Prime Minister of India , as addressed to in the Constitution of India — Prime Minister for the Union, is the chief of government, head of the Council of Ministers and the leader of the majority party in parliament...
, Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
. During that tour, which also included Hong Kong, she announced she was retiring, and her final recital was at a festival in Stirling
Stirling
Stirling is a city and former ancient burgh in Scotland, and is at the heart of the wider Stirling council area. The city is clustered around a large fortress and medieval old-town beside the River Forth...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
on 18 May 1960, where she played two sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti
Domenico Scarlatti
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...
, Beethoven's Appassionata
Piano Sonata No. 23 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 is a piano sonata. It is considered one of the three great piano sonatas of his middle period . It was composed during 1804 and 1805, and perhaps 1806, and was dedicated to Count Franz von Brunswick...
sonata, and works by Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Chopin, Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
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
Anatole Fistoulari
Anatole Fistoulari was a noted 20th century conductor.Anatole Fistoulari was born in Kiev Ukraine into a musical family...
, at the Royal Albert Hall. This was the work that had made her famous in the film Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
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
Neville Marriner
Sir Neville Marriner is an English conductor and violinist.-Biography:Marriner was born in Lincoln and studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. He played the violin in the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Martin String Quartet and London Symphony Orchestra, playing with the...
. In 1967 she started to foster the career of the ten-year-old Terence Judd
Terence Judd
Terence Judd was an outstanding 20th century English pianist who died young, poised on the verge of a musical career....
. In 1969 she appeared alongside fellow Australian pianist Geoffrey Parsons
Geoffrey Parsons (pianist)
Geoffrey Penwill Parsons AO OBE was an Australian pianist, most particularly notable as an accompanist to singers and instrumentalists...
in a two-piano recital at Australia House, London. In 1979 she gave a two-piano recital with Philip Fowke
Philip Fowke
-Biography:Philip Francis Fowke studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Gordon Green, a pupil of Egon Petri. In 1974 he made his London debut with a recital at the Wigmore Hall . That year he won joint second place at the BBC Piano Competition...
. She appeared again with Geoffrey Parsons on 29 November 1981 at a fund-raising concert at the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
. This proved to be her very last appearance as a pianist (another one was scheduled in 1988 but had to be cancelled).
In August 1981 Eileen Joyce served on the jury of the 2nd Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia
Sydney International Piano Competition
The Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia is a music competition, presented by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in association with the University of Sydney and broadcast live throughout Australia. It is held every four years, over a three-week period in July-August, and is...
(SIPCA), alongside Rex Hobcroft, Cécile Ousset
Cécile Ousset
Cécile Ousset is a French pianist.Cécile Ousset was born in Tarbes, France, and gave her first recital at the age of five, subsequently studying at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10 with Marcel Ciampi where, aged only fourteen, she was awarded first prize in the piano graduation class of...
, Abbey Simon
Abbey Simon
-Education:Simon began lessons with David Saperton at the age of five. At the age of eight, Simon was accepted by Józef Hofmann as a scholarship student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he trained with fellow classmates Jorge Bolet and Sidney Foster. Simon also took lessons...
, Claude Frank
Claude Frank
Claude Frank is a German-born, American Jewish pianist whose career has included appearances with highly reputed orchestras, at major festivals, and in major recital halls around the world...
, and Roger Woodward
Roger Woodward
Roger Woodward AC OBE is an Australian classical concert pianist.-Biography:Roger Woodward was born in 1942 in Chatswood, a suburb of Sydney, the youngest of four children to Gladys and Frank Woodward...
. 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
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
. On 7 June, a memorial service was conducted at St Peter's Church. Other musicians also interred at the same churchyard are Frederick Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
and his wife, Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar CBE was a British conductor, horn player, and biographer. As a conductor, he specialized in the music of late romantic composers; including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. He left a great legacy of recordings of British music, in particular Elgar, Vaughan Williams,...
, Jack Brymer
Jack Brymer
John Alexander Brymer OBE , was a British clarinettist, born in South Shields.-Biography:The son of a builder, Jack Brymer started his working life as a teacher, being at Heath Clark School, Thornton Heath, Surrey in the late 1940s...
and Beatrice Harrison
Beatrice Harrison
Beatrice Harrison was a British cellist active in the first half of the 20th century. She gave first performances of several important English works, especially those of Frederick Delius, and made the first or standard recordings of others.-Early training:Beatrice Harrison was born in Roorkee,...
.
Conductors
The list of conductors with whom Eileen Joyce worked includes: Ernest AnsermetErnest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
, Sir John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, Eduard van Beinum
Eduard van Beinum
Eduard van Beinum was a Dutch conductor.-Biography:Beinum was born in Arnhem, Netherlands, where he received his first violin and piano lessons at an early age. He joined the Arnhem Orchestra as a violinist in 1918. His grandfather was conductor of a military band...
, Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
, Warwick Braithwaite
Warwick Braithwaite
Henry Warwick Braithwaite was a New Zealand-born orchestra conductor. He worked mostly in Great Britain and was especially known for his work in opera....
, Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron, CBE was an English conductor. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, the son of a German immigrant family. His birth name was Basil George Cameron Hindenberg. -Career:...
, Sergiu Celibidache
Sergiu Celibidache
- Biography :Celibidache was born in Roman, Romania, and began his studies in music with the piano, after which he studied music, philosophy and mathematics in Bucharest, Romania and then in Paris...
, Albert Coates
Albert Coates (musician)
Albert Coates was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses...
, Sir Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
, Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar
Norman Del Mar CBE was a British conductor, horn player, and biographer. As a conductor, he specialized in the music of late romantic composers; including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. He left a great legacy of recordings of British music, in particular Elgar, Vaughan Williams,...
, Anatole Fistoulari
Anatole Fistoulari
Anatole Fistoulari was a noted 20th century conductor.Anatole Fistoulari was born in Kiev Ukraine into a musical family...
, Grzegorz Fitelberg
Grzegorz Fitelberg
Grzegorz Fitelberg was a Polish conductor, violinist and composer. He was a member of the Młoda Polska group, together with artists such as Karol Szymanowski, Ludomir Różycki and Mieczysław Karłowicz....
, Sir Alexander Gibson
Alexander Gibson
Alexander Gibson may refer to:* Alexander Gibson , botanist and forester in India* Alexander Gibson , Scottish conductor and music director* Alexander Gibson , Canadian industrialist...
, Sir Dan Godfrey
Dan Godfrey
Sir Dan Godfrey was a British music conductor and member of a musical dynasty that included his father Dan Godfrey...
, Sir Hamilton Harty
Hamilton Harty
Sir Hamilton Harty was an Irish and British composer, conductor, pianist and organist. In his capacity as a conductor, he was particularly noted as an interpreter of the music of Berlioz and he was much respected as a piano accompanist of exceptional prowess...
, Sir Bernard Heinze
Bernard Heinze
Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC was an Australian Professor of Music, conductor, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music....
, Milan Horvat
Milan Horvat
Milan Horvat is a Croatian conductor. From 1969 until 1975, he was head of the newly created Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra...
, Enrique Jordá
Enrique Jordá
Enrique Jordá was a Spanish-American conductor. Born in San Sebastián , later on he was a naturalized US citizen....
, Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
, Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber was an Austrian conductor.- Biography :Born in Vienna, Kleiber studied in Prague...
, Henry Krips
Henry Krips (conductor)
Henry Maria Krips MBE was an Austrian-Australian conductor and composer, best known for his 23-year record term as principal conductor of the South Australian Symphony Orchestra...
, Constant Lambert
Constant Lambert
Leonard Constant Lambert was a British composer and conductor.-Early life:Lambert, the son of Russian-born Australian painter George Lambert, was educated at Christ's Hospital and the Royal College of Music...
, Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf was a naturalized American Austrian conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality...
, Igor Markevitch
Igor Markevitch
Igor Markevitch was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.- Origin :Igor Markevich was born in Kiev, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century...
, Sir Neville Marriner
Neville Marriner
Sir Neville Marriner is an English conductor and violinist.-Biography:Marriner was born in Lincoln and studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. He played the violin in the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Martin String Quartet and London Symphony Orchestra, playing with the...
, Jean Martinon
Jean Martinon
Jean Martinon was a French conductor and composer.-Biography:Martinon was born in Lyon, where he began his education, going on to the Conservatoire de Paris to study under Albert Roussel for composition, under Charles Munch and Roger Désormière for conducting, under Vincent d'Indy for harmony,...
, Charles Münch, Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
, Joseph Post
Joseph Post
Joseph Mozart Post OBE was an Australian conductor and music administrator. He made an unrivalled contribution to the development of opera-conducting in Australia and was, in Roger Covell's words, the 'first Australian-born musician to excel in this genre'...
, Victor de Sabata
Victor de Sabata
Victor de Sabata was an Italian conductor and composer. He is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished operatic conductors of the twentieth century, especially for his Verdi, Puccini and Wagner. He is also acclaimed for his interpretations of orchestral music...
, Sir Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
, Carlos Surinach
Carlos Surinach
Carlos Surinach was a Catalan Spanish-born composer and conductor.He was born in Barcelona, where he held conducting posts at the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona and the Gran Teatre del Liceu...
, and Sir Henry J. Wood
Henry Wood
Henry Wood was a British conductor.Henry Wood may also refer to:* Henry C. Wood , American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient* Henry Wood , English cricketer...
.
In a 1969 interview she said the greatest conductor she had ever worked with was Sergiu Celibidache. 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.
Work in film
With her partner Christopher Mann's influence, Eileen Joyce contributed to the soundtracks of a number of films. She is best known as the soloist in RachmaninoffSergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
's Piano Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
, used to great effect in David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
's film Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
(1945
1945 in film
The year 1945 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Paramount Studios releases theatrical short cartoon titled The Friendly Ghost, featuring a ghost named Casper.* With Rossellini's Roma Città aperta, Italian neorealist cinema begins....
).
She also provided the playing for the piano music in the 1945 film The Seventh Veil
The Seventh Veil
The Seventh Veil is a 1945 British melodrama film made by Ortus Films, a company established by producer Sydney Box, who here released through General Film Distributors in the UK and Universal Pictures in the United States.-Plot:...
, but this was uncredited in the film. This music again included the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto, and also Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
's Concerto in A minor
Piano Concerto (Grieg)
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, was the only concerto Grieg completed. It is one of his most popular works and among the most popular of all piano concerti.-Structure :The concerto is in three movements:...
; as well as solo pieces by Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
and Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
(the slow movement of the Pathétique Sonata
Piano Sonata No. 8 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, commonly known as Sonata Pathétique, was written in 1798 when the composer was 27 years old, and was published in 1799. Beethoven dedicated the work to his friend Prince Karl von Lichnowsky...
assumed a particular importance in the film).
She appeared in Battle for Music, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134309/ a 1945 docu-drama about the struggles of the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
during the war, in which a number of prominent composers and performers appeared as themselves.
Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
’s music for the 1946 film Men of Two Worldshttp://us.imdb.com/title/tt0038736/ (released in the USA 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". Eileen Joyce played this for the film, with Muir Mathieson
Muir Mathieson
James Muir Mathieson was a Scottish conductor and composer. Mathieson was almost always described as a "Musical Director" on a large number of British films.-Career:...
conducting. Bliss also wrote this out as a stand-alone concert piece, which Eileen Joyce both premiered in 1945 and recorded in 1946. This recording was more favourably received than the film was.
She was in the 1946
1946 in film
The year 1946 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*November 21 - William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives premieres in New York featuring an ensemble cast including Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell.*December 20 - Frank Capra's It's a...
British film A Girl in a Million, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038562/ in which she plays a part of Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
's Symphonic Variations
Symphonic Variations (Franck)
The Symphonic Variations , M. 46, is a work for piano and orchestra, written in 1885 by César Franck. It has been described as "one of Franck's tightest and most finished works", "a superb blending of piano and orchestra", and "a flawless work and as near perfection as a human composer can hope to...
. In 1947, her playing of Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
's Impromptu in E flat is heard in the segment "The Alien Corn" in the Dirk Bogarde
Dirk Bogarde
Sir Dirk Bogarde was an English actor and novelist. Initially a matinee idol in such films as Doctor in the House and other Rank Organisation pictures, Bogarde later acted in art-house films such as Death in Venice...
film Quartet. She was also seen as herself in Trent's Last Case
Trent's Last Case
Trent's Last Case is a detective novel written by E.C. Bentley and first published in 1913. Its central character reappeared subsequently in the novel Trent's Own Case and the short-story collection Trent Intervenes .-Plot summary:...
(1952), playing Mozart's C minor Concerto, K. 491 at the Royal Opera House with an orchestra under Anthony Collins.
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
Braille
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
. While it told the main elements of her story, it was in places ludicrously fictionalised. It was dramatised for radio in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, Norway and Sweden. Wherever She Goes
Wherever She Goes
Wherever She Goes is a 1951 Australian feature film that tells the early part of the life story of pianist Eileen Joyce.-Synopsis:Eileen Joyce is born on the Tasmanian coast and becomes fascinated with music after hearing a man named Daniel play a mouth organ...
was a 1951
1951 in film
The year 1951 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Sweden - May Britt is scouted by Italian film-makers Carlo Ponti and Mario Soldati-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:...
black-and-white feature film based on the book, directed by Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon (film director)
Michael Gordon was an American stage actor and stage and film director.-Life and career:Gordon was born in Baltimore and raised in a middle class Jewish community. He was a member of the Group Theatre , and was blacklisted as a Communist in the days of McCarthyism...
. It was shot on location in Australia. Eileen Joyce's character was played by Suzanne Parrett (in the only film she ever made), and Parrett's performance double was Pamela Page. Eileen Joyce briefly appears 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.
Honours
In 1971 Eileen Joyce was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of CambridgeUniversity of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. She was extremely proud of this, and insisted on being referred to as "Doctor Joyce". In 1979 and 1982, she was awarded similar honours by the University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
and the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
respectively. Her memorial headstone refers to her as "Doctor Eileen Joyce".
For her services to music, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
(CMG) in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1981. While happy to accept the award, she made no secret of her disappointment that she was not made a dame.
On 10 February 1989, a special Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
tribute concert to her was presented at the Sydney Town Hall. Stuart Challender
Stuart Challender
Stuart David Challender, AO was an Australian conductor, known particularly for his work with Opera Australia and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.-Early life:...
conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra , commonly known as the Sydney Symphony, is an Australian symphony orchestra based in Sydney...
, with Bernadette Harvey-Balkus playing the first movement of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. Although now frail, Eileen Joyce flew to Australia to attend the concert, where she addressed the audience. The playwright Nick Enright
Nick Enright
-Life:He was drama captain of St Ignatius' College, Riverview in 1964, where, like Gerard Windsor and Justin Fleming, he was taught by Melvyn Morrow. At that school, he won the 1sts Debating Premiership in both 1966 and 1967....
interviewed her for the radio broadcast.
Her portrait was painted by Augustus John
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....
, John Bratby
John Bratby
John Randall Bratby was an English painter who founded the kitchen sink realism style of art that was influential in the late 1950s....
, Rajmund Kanelba
Rajmund Kanelba
Raymond Kanelba also Rajmund Kanelba was a 20th century Polish painter.He was born in Warsaw and educated there as well as in Vienna and Paris. He was strongly influenced by the école de Paris but with rather realistic and anti-impressionist style...
and others. A bronze bust by Anna Mahler
Anna Mahler
Anna Justine Mahler was an Austrian sculptor.-Early Life:Born in Vienna, she was the daughter of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma Schindler. They nicknamed her 'Gucki' on account of her big blue eyes...
stands at the Eileen Joyce Studio at the University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
in Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
. She was also the subject of photographic portraits by Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
, Angus McBean
Angus McBean
Angus McBean , was a Welsh photographer, associated with surrealism.-Biography:Angus McBean was born in South Wales in June 1904. Despite the surname and the family's claim to be head of the sub-clan McBean, they had been Welsh for generations. Clem McBean was a surveyor in the mines and the family...
and Antony Armstrong-Jones
Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon
Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, GCVO, RDI is an English photographer and film maker. He was married to Princess Margaret, younger daughter of King George VI and younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II....
.
Legacy
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 HartnellNorman Hartnell
Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell, KCVO was a British fashion designer. Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to HM The Queen 1940, subsequently Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother...
) provoked snobbish reaction and led to her being musically underrated. Her surviving recordings show that such patronising judgments were very misplaced: she was a fine musician and a technically magnificent pianist. For example, her 1941 recording of the Étude in A flat, Op. 1, No. 2 by Paul de Schlözer
Paul de Schlözer
Paul de Schlözer was an obscure Polish or Russian pianist and teacher of German descent. He was possibly also a composer, but the only two works attributed to him may have been written by Moritz Moszkowski....
is considered unsurpassed. This brief three-minute work is so demanding that few pianists even attempt it; Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
was said to play it every morning as a warm-up exercise.
Modern virtuoso pianists such as Stephen Hough
Stephen Hough
Stephen Andrew Gill Hough is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality .-Biography:...
have expressed amazement that Eileen 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
Zeehan, Tasmania
Zeehan is a town on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia. It lies southwest of Burnie. At the 2006 census, Zeehan had a population of 845. It is part of the Municipality of West Coast....
, there is a small park called the Eileen Joyce Memorial Park. The University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
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 Wittenoon Terrace, Boulder
City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder
The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a Local Government Area in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, about east of the state capital, Perth. The City covers an area of , and its seat of government is the town of Kalgoorlie; all but 244 of the city's population live either in...
, has a commemorative plaque.
Personal life
On 16 September 1937 Eileen 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 IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The marriage failed and they separated. Douglas Barratt served with the British Navy, and on 30 April 1942 (or 24 June 1942), he was killed on active service off Norway when the ship he was on, HMS Gossamer, was blown up. For reasons she never explained, Eileen Joyce always said 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 1970. They both claimed they were legally married, but there is no documentary evidence of this. Mann had previously been married to the Norwegian actress Greta Gynt
Greta Gynt
Greta Gynt , born Margrethe Woxholt, was a Norwegian singer, dancer and actress. -Biography:Greta Gynt was born Margrethe Woxholt in Oslo, Norway. As a child, she came with her parents to England and started dancing lessons at the age of 5. Eventually, they moved back to Norway...
, and had been Madeleine Carroll
Madeleine Carroll
Edith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree...
's publicist and manager. Mann proved an unsympathetic stepfather to Eileen Joyce's son John Barratt, and Eileen herself, between punishing touring schedules and bouts of ill-health, also found little time for him. From the early age of three years and three months, John was sent to boarding school. Eileen's guilt over her neglect of her son, combined with overwork, contributed to a breakdown in 1953. John himself developed severe psychiatric problems, owing in part to his feelings of abandonment from a very young age. He 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.
In 1957, Eileen Joyce and Christopher Mann bought Chartwell Farm (not the Chartwell
Chartwell
Chartwell was the principal adult home of Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill and his wife Clementine bought the property, located two miles south of Westerham, Kent, England, in 1922...
historic home) and Bardogs Farm, Kent, from Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
. Their home in London was bought by the actor Richard Todd
Richard Todd
Richard Todd OBE was an Irish-born British stage and film actor and soldier.-Early life:Richard Todd was born as Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Andrew William Palethorpe Todd, was an Irish physician and an international Irish rugby player who gained three caps for...
.
Eileen Joyce experienced considerable ill health throughout her adult years, particularly severe rheumatism in her shoulders, which at one time necessitated a plaster cast, and sciatica. Towards the end of her life, she suffered from senile dementia.
Further reading
- Eileen Joyce: A Portrait, Richard Davis, with foreword by Stephen HoughStephen HoughStephen Andrew Gill Hough is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality .-Biography:...
; Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001