Myra Hess – National Treasure

Jessica Duchen
Foreword by Stephen Kovacevich
£40.00

Best summer books of 2025The Financial Times

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

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Description

Throughout World War II, Dame Myra Hess, Britain’s greatest concert pianist, ran lunchtime concerts at London’s National Gallery. They became the stuff of legend, proving music’s power to support the human spirit in the darkest of times. This biography, the first in nearly five decades, follows Hess’s transformation from rebellious young musician into inimitably powerful woman and national heroine. She was born into a religious Jewish family in Victorian north London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music with the renowned pedagogue Tobias Matthay. Nevertheless, as a woman seeking to build a performing career before World War I, she faced a struggle for recognition. At home, a clash with her father led her to seek alternative ways of building a substitute family of friends.

Stardom ensued when she reached the US in 1922. Soon, with America at her feet from coast to coast, her beloved transcription of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring capturing public imagination, and British artistic luminaries, politicians and royalty flocking to her UK performances, Hess seemed unstoppable. During the war and through the National Gallery concerts, she became an unsung activist, helping refugee musicians from Nazi-occupied countries to find their feet in Britain and personally endeavouring to aid young British musicians faced with wartime deprivations.

Myra Hess – National Treasure offers previously unpublished extracts from her correspondence and postwar American tour diaries, full of insights into her collaborations with towering musicians of her day, including Arturo Toscanini, Pablo Casals, Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier. Interviews with her former pupils shed light on Hess’s rigour, intensity and warmth, her dislike of recording and her special way of building her connection with her audience when on stage.

Hess encountered innumerable personal challenges nonetheless, including some disastrous medical misdiagnoses. A sociable woman who disliked being alone, she sacrificed her personal life in her determination to dedicate herself entirely to music. And though warm and giving, she did not hold back when faced with betrayal, cruelty or deception, or when others failed to meet the ferociously high standards she set for herself. Dame Myra Hess emerges at last from behind the myths: a unique personality full of generosity, courage, humour and sheer, unfailing ‘chutzpah’.

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