With obvious affection Duchen paints a rounded portrait of this much-loved and determined pianist, who instigated the famed wartime series at the National Gallery.
The Financial Times– Best summer books of 2025
Jessica Duchen’s chunky, sumptuously illustrated biography of Hess draws upon a vast number of primary sources to document her life, performing schedules and repertoire in painstaking detail.
The Critic
One can safely say that Duchen’s new volume is the definitive biography… Taking into account much newly uncovered documentation, Duchen offers a frank, superbly detailed, meticulously researched and thoroughly sourced portrait of Hess that is sympathetic without being gushing. As a historian, Duchen leaves nearly no stone unturned… Her clear, fluid and informative prose vividly draws one into Hess’s milieu… Piano mavens, music lovers and history buffs alike will find Duchen’s biography most compelling. Once you start reading this book, it’ll be hard to put down.
International Piano
Duchen’s passion for her remarkable subject shines though this superbly researched book, not only recreating Hess’s life but evoking the social milieu in which she lived.
The Jewish Chronicle
Duchen thoroughly immerses us in Myra’s world… There are two earlier books about Hess but none for half a century. This one is definitive. Duchen is a seasoned music journalist who is able to turn what is perhaps a niche subject into one of general interest. Assiduously researched and sourced by someone with a profound knowledge of pianists and the piano… The book is beautifully designed and produced… This is a highly desirable biography that honours a great musician.
Jeremy Nicholas – Gramophone
Duchen’s book is fascinating on many levels. It offers a rich slice of music history, showing how the pianistic scene developed, chronicling British and American concert-going in the First and Second World Wars, and revealing the important part Jewish musicians played in those times.
But the book is also a colourful piece of 20s social history, covering everything from fashionable intellectual Bohemianism (Myra seemed to know everybody who was anybody), to the wartime campaign in support of Jewish refugees (for whom Myra was a lobbyist).
Yet this is at the same time an energetically researched biography of a remarkable woman who single-handedly changed Britain’s musical landscape. Jessica’s Duchen’s great achievement is to have woven all these elements into a very entertaining narrative.
Michael Church – Music and Literary Critic
Duchen puts her finger on one of Hess’s special gifts – ‘a singerly technique that not all actual singers master’. It’s heard to bewitching effect in the recordings she made for Columbia in the late 1920s, when her command of the keyboard was at its peak.
Damian Thompson – The Spectator
An energetically researched biography of a remarkable woman who single-handedly changed Britain’s musical landscape. Jessica’s Duchen’s great achievement is to have woven all these elements into a very entertaining narrative.
Camden New Journal
This new biography, the first for nearly 50 years, is meticulously researched and richly illustrated: Jessica Duchen brings to her task not just the biographer’s curious eye but a music critic’s ear and discernment.
Bernard Hughes – theartsdesk.com. Read the full review here
Duchen’s latest offering continues her unbroken run of elegant and winning music writing, celebrating a legend of British musicmaking, Dame Myra Hess. … As with the best music books, there’s the perfect synthesis here between a celebration of the music that defined Hess’s career (notably her beloved Beethoven) and her generous, sometimes unpredictable personality.
Barry Forshaw – Classical CD Choice. Read the full review here
I loved reading this affectionate, elegant and informative biography of one of the greatest figures in British musical history.
Sir Stephen Hough
Myra Hess was not only a major artist and a riveting personality; she also lived through uniquely fascinating times. In this eminently readable biography, Jessica Duchen brilliantly evokes both a powerful and attractive character, and the eras she inhabited. A sympathetic and thoroughly researched study of a musical legend.
Steven Isserlis
An engrossing read bringing fresh perspectives on a remarkable musician and on the 20th century cultural backdrop from which she emerged.
Fiona Maddocks – Author and Music Critic
Packed with colourful anecdotes and musical insight, this biography is a tour-de-force, revealing the real Myra Hess beyond the myths
Tasmin Little
Jessica Duchen writes with a great depth of musical understanding and genuine empathy for the neglected National Treasure that is Myra Hess. At last here is the biography she so richly deserves as Jessica Duchen gives Myra Hess a concert platform for a new audience. It’s a terrific achievement. Surely Hess, who did so much in wartime London to bolster courage and culture by giving concerts at the National Gallery, should now be on the fourth plinth opposite the Gallery?
Anne Sebba – Author, presenter & lecturer
Jessica Duchen’s biography of Myra Hess restores to us a great pianist in all her complex glory, complete with her dedication, her struggles with nerves, her probing musicianship, her personal courage in the face of illness, her gift for friendship, and her sense of fun. A sympathetic, balanced and rounded portrait.
Susan Tomes – Pianist, writer and educator
