EILEEN ALANNAH JOYCE (ZEEHAN, TASMANIA, AUSTRALIA, 21 NOVEMBER 1907 OR 1 JANUARY, 1908 – REDHILL, SURREY, ENGLAND, 25 MARCH 1991)
Eileen Joyce was born on 1 January 1908 at Zeehan, Tasmania, fourth of seven children of Tasmanian-born Joseph Thomas Joyce, miner, and his Victorian-born wife Alice Gertrude, née May. By 1911 the family was living at Boulder, a gold-mining town adjacent to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Like many mining communities, Boulder and Kalgoorlie resounded with music from choirs, bands, and orchestras reflecting the traditions of miners from many countries. Central to Eileen’s musical training were the piano lessons given her by Sister Mary Monica Butler at St Joseph’s Convent School, where she was educated.
A system of examinations, then organised by London academies and colleges of music, ensured a high standard for music teachers and students in both city and country. It was through this system that Joyce’s talent was discovered by the visiting London examiner Charles Schilsky in 1923. So moved was he by her playing that he immediately wrote to the Kalgoorlie Miner that she ‘bids fair to become within the next very few years a pianist of sensational order and will take her place in the very first ranks among her contemporaries’ (1923, 4). She was then fifteen years old. Money raised on the goldfields provided a two-year scholarship for her to attend Osborne, a Loreto Convent school in Perth, where she extended her general education and was guided in piano by an extraordinarily gifted teacher, Sister John More. In 1926, the last year of her scholarship, a committee was formed to raise funds for the young pianist’s training abroad. Joyce left Australia in December 1926 to study under the director of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hochschule für Musik at Leipzig, Germany, the pianist Max Pauer.
Pauer’s classes proved too advanced and Joyce transferred to Robert Teichmüller, another teacher at the institution. Under his instruction she made great progress. In 1930, after she decided to move to London, Teichmüller wrote to the distinguished English conductor Albert Coates commending her highly. She made her London début in September that year playing Prokofiev’s third piano concerto at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Proms under Sir Henry Wood. During the next three years she extended her technique and musicianship through studies with Tobias Matthay, Adelina de Lara, Artur Schnabel, and Myra Hess. BBC broadcast recitals began to spread her name, but the most effective medium was recordings. The first of these came out in June 1933, following a small payment to Parlophone for a private recording. Her brilliant, sure-fingered technique quickly led to a contract.
Three years later Joyce embarked on her first Australian tour, organised by the fledgling Australian Broadcasting Commission. Shortly after her return to London, in a rapid romance she married Douglas Legh Barratt, a stockbroker, on 16 September 1937 at the register office, Marylebone; a son was born in 1939. It was an unhappy marriage that was cut short by Barratt’s death at sea in 1942 while on service with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Like many musicians, Joyce helped raise morale by touring and playing during World War II, often with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in theatres and music halls.
During the 1940s Joyce formed a relationship with Christopher Mann (d. 1978), a theatrical and film agent whose list of artists, musicians, and actors included some of the greatest stars in Britain and the United States of America. It is not known whether they were officially married, although both claimed they were, and they were regarded so by the public (Davis 2001, 114). Mann managed Joyce’s career, arranging international tours for her in Europe, the United States, Africa, South America, and Asia, as well as another to Australia in 1948. She gained a star status that she enjoyed for the rest of her life. Her glamorous image owed much to her lavish concert gowns, created by leading designers, particularly Norman Hartnell. The couple’s combined wealth enabled them to buy property in Mayfair and farms in the country, including two at Chartwell previously owned by (Sir) Winston Churchill, who became their neighbour.
Extending her career into film and television, Joyce performed on screen and in soundtracks, and acted in A Girl in a Million (1946) and Man of Flowers (1983). In 1949 she took up the harpsichord and clavichord, becoming part of the movement to revive early music then taking place in Britain. By 1960 she had made more than one hundred recordings, some of which were highly acclaimed. It was unfortunate that she was often regarded as a light-weight pianist because of the many recordings of shorter works which established her name. In the 1930s, she had practised seven hours a day, amassing a wide repertoire that included over seventy concertos. She gave the first performances of 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. Her film work is probably best known: in 1945 she played Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto on the soundtrack in two feature films, Seventh Veil and Brief Encounter.
Generosity to both her fans and to charitable causes had built her popularity further. She often chatted with admirers at her concerts, and performed in schools, asylums, hospitals, and prisons. Her gruelling professional regimen, which included annual tours of Britain, radio and television broadcasts, recording sessions, and lengthy concert programs, provoked acute physical and nervous problems in mid-life, including a nervous breakdown in 1953. For many years she suffered from rheumatism and sciatica.
After effectively retiring from the concert scene in 1960, Joyce continued to be involved in the music world. She encouraged young musicians and supported musical causes. She returned to Perth in 1979 to adjudicate at the National Eisteddfod, and the same year donated $37,600 to the University of Western Australia for an Eileen Joyce Music Fund, as well as giving Western Australia a clavichord, an antique French music chair, a portrait of herself by Augustus John, and a bronze bust by Anna Mahler. In 1981 she attended the opening of the Eileen Joyce Studio at UWA, which she had financed at a cost of $110,000. Awarded honorary doctorates in music from the universities of Cambridge (1971), Western Australia (1979), and Melbourne (1982), she was appointed CMG in 1981. Survived by her son, she died on 25 March 1991 at Redhill, Surrey, and was cremated. She is remembered in Tasmania by the Eileen Joyce Memorial Park.
TRACKLIST
01 Fantasia & Fugue in A Minor, BWV 944 (Bach) Parophone E11354 (CXE 89367) 7 February 1938
02 Keyboard Sonata No. 6 in A Major ‘Toccata’ (Paradies) Parlophone E11354 (CXE 8937) 7 February 1938
03 Rondo in A Major, K. 386 (Mozart) Parlophone E11292 (CXE 74501) 2 February 1936
04 Suite in C Major, K. 399- II. Allemande (Mozart) Parlophone E11443 (CXE 9813) 26 May 1939
05 Suite in C Major, K. 399- III. Courante (Mozart) Parlophone E11443 (CXE 9813) 26 May 1939
06 Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545 ‘Sonata facile’- I. Allegro (Mozart) Parlophone
07 Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545 ‘Sonata facile’- II. Andante (Mozart) Parlophone
08 Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545 ‘Sonata facile’- III. Rondo. Allegretto (Mozart) Parlophone
09 Andante in A Major, D. 604 (Schubert) Parlophone E11403 (CXE9619) 7 February 1939
10 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899- No. 2 in E-Flat Major (Schubert) Parlophone E11403 (CXE9620) 7 February 1939
11 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899- No. 4 in A-Flat Major (Schubert) Parlophone E11440 (CXE 102178) 18 December 1939
12 Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2 (Chopin) Parlophone E11448 (CXE 10467) 3 May 1940
13 Nocturne in B Major, Op. 32 No. 1 (Chopin) Parlophone E11448 (CXE 10466) 3 May 1940
14 Fantasie-impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Op. Posth. 66 (Chopin) Parlophone E11432 (CXE 10213) 18 December 1939
15 Berceuse in D-Flat Major, Op. 57 (Chopin) Parlophone E11432 (CXE 10214) 18 December 1939
16 8 Novelletten, Op. 21- No. 2, Äusserst rasch und mit Bravour (Schumann) Parlophone E11329 (CXE 8261) 7 April 1937
17 8 Novelletten, Op. 21- No. 6, Sehr lebhaft, mit vielem Humor (Schumann) Parlophone E11417 (CXE 9814) 26 May 1939
18 Bunte Blätter, Op. 99, 3 Stücklein- No. 1, Nicht schnell, mit Innigkeit (Schumann) Parlophone E11363 (CXE 9199) 31 May 1938
01 Liebesträume, S. 541- No. 3, Nocturne in A-Flat Major (Liszt) Parlophone E11372 (CXE 9303) 31 August 1938
02 2 Konzertetüden, S. 145- No. 1, Waldesrauschen (Liszt) Parlophone E11265 (CXE 6768) 4 January 1935
03 4 Valses oubliées, S. 215- No. 1 (Liszt) Parlophone R2738 (CE 10215) 18 December 1939
04 Années de pèlerinage I, Switzerland, S. 160- No. 4, Au bord d’une source (Liszt) Parlophone E11340 (CXE 8584) 2 September 1
05 3 Études de concert, S. 144- No. 2 in F Minor ‘La Leggierezza’ (Liszt) Parlophone E11237 (CXE 6120) 8 June 1933
06 2 Konzertetüden, S. 145- No. 2, Gnomenreigen (Liszt) Parlophone R1965 (CXE 6597) 6 September 1934
07 6 Organ Prelude & Fugue in A minor BWV543 S4621 (Bach-Liszt) Parlophone E11310 (CXE 74756), 25 February 193
08 Widmung, S. 566 (Schumann-Liszt) Parlophone R2228 (CE 7477) 25 February 1936
09 Frühlingsnacht, S. 568 ‘Überm Garten durch die Lüfte’ (Schumann-Liszt) Parlophone E11363 (CXE 9199) 31 May 1937
10 Spinnerlied aus dem Fliegenden Holländer, S. 440 (Wagner-Liszt) Parlophone E11424 (CXE 9764) 24 April 19
11 Valse de l’opéra Faust de Gounod, S. 407 (Gounod-Liszt) Parlophone E11252 (CXE 6120) 5 May 1934
12 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118- No. 5, Romanze in F Major (Brahms) Parlophone E11340 (CXE 8583) 2 September 193
13 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119- No. 3, Intermezzo in C Major (Brahms) Parlophone E11279 (CXE 6975) 14 May 1935
14 7 Fantasien, Op. 116- No. 7, Capriccio in D Minor (Brahms) Parlophone E11279 (CXE 6975) 14 May 1935
15 8 Klavierstücke, Op. 76- No. 6, Intermezzo in A Major (Brahms) Parlophone E11259 (CXE 6598) 26 September 1934
16 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119- No. 4, Rhapsody in E-Flat Major (Brahms) Parlophone E11259 (CXE 6599) 26 September 1934
17 3 Intermezzos, Op. 117- No. 2 in B-Flat Minor (Brahms) Parlophone E11417 (CXE 9763) 24 April 1939
18 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118- No. 2, Intermezzo in A Major (Brahms) Parlophone E11286 (CXE 7257) 11 November 1935
19 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118- No. 3, Ballade in G Minor (Brahms) Parlophone E11286 (CXE 7258) 11 November 1935
01 Rondo favori in E-Flat Major, Op. 11 (Hummel) Parlophone E11265 (CXE 6769) 4 January 1935
02 12 Études caractéristiques, Op. 2- No. 6 in F-Sharp Major ‘Si oiseau j’étais, à toi je volerais!’ (von Henselt)
03 2 Études de concert, Op. 1- No. 2 in A-Flat Major (De Schlözer) Parlophone E11237 (CXE 6121) 8 June 1933
04 3 Morceaux, Op. 34- No. 1, Waltz in E Major (Moszkowski) Parlophone E11239 (CXE 6247) 28 October 1933
05 Caprice espagnol, Op. 37 (Moszkowski) Parlophone E11329 (CXE 8262) 7 April 1937
06 España, Op. 165- II. Tango (Alebeniz-Godowsky) Parlophone R2738 (CE 10216) 18 December 1939
07 Goyescas, Book 1- No. 4, Quejas, o La maja y el ruisenor (Granados) Parlophone E11314 (CXE 8025) 11 January 1937
08 6 Stücke, Op. 32- No. 3, Rustle of Spring (Sinding) Parlophone E11427 (CXE 9955) 12 July 1939
09 Stimmungen, Op. 73- No. 2, Scherzo-Impromptu (Grieg) Parlophone E11427 (CXE 9955) 12 July 1939
10 Lyric Pieces, Book 3, Op. 43- No. 1, Butterfly (Grieg) Parlophone E11411 (CXE 9762) 24 April 1939
11 Lyric Pieces, Book 4, Op. 47- No. 3, Melody (Grieg) Parlophone E11411 (CXE 9762) 24 April 1939
12 Lyric Pieces, Book 3, Op. 43- No. 2, Lonely Wanderer (Grieg) Parlophone E11411 (CXE 9761) 24 April 1939
13 Lyric Pieces, Book 7, Op. 62- No. 4, Brooklet (Grieg) Parlophone E11411 (CXE 9761) 24 April 1939
14 Lyric Pieces, Book 3, Op. 43- No. 6, To the Spring (Grieg) Parlophone E11427 (CXE 9954) 12 July 1939
15 Lyric Pieces, Book 10, Op. 71- No. 2, Summer’s Eve (Grieg) Parlophone E11427 (CXE 9954) 12 July 1939
16 10 Pieces, Op. 24- No. 9, Romance (Sibelius) Parlophone E11424 (CXE 9956) 12 July 1939
17 3 Pieces, Op. 5- No. 3, Menuetto scherzando (Stavenhagen) Parlophone E11314 (CXE 8024) 11 January 1937
18 En route, Op. 9 (Palmgren) Parlophone E11246 (CXE 6398) 26 February 1934
19 Viennese Dance No. 2 (Friedman, after Eduard Gärtner) Parlophone R2228 (CE 7478), 25 February 1936
20 Impromptu No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 31 (Fauré) Parlophone E11372 (CXE 9304) 11 August 1938
21 Images, Book 1, L. 110- No. 1, Reflets dans l’eau (Debussy) Parlophone E11279 (CXE 6975) 14 May 1935
22 Pour le piano, L. 95- III. Toccata Parlophone E11239 (CXE 6248) 28 October 1933
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