|
|
|
|
|
Admission: One Shilling Lichfield Garrick
DAME Myra Hess was one of those little
known, quintessentially English treasures our nation once used to
produce. Her debut as a celebrated concert pianist came in
1907 playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 with Sir Thomas Beecham
conducting when she was just 17. She toured Europe and the USA and, by all
accounts, was quite a formidable lady when was declared in 1939. For various reasons including the danger of light
attracting German bombers and the great and the good concentrated
together as an easy target the Government closed all concert halls for
the duration. This had serious consequences for professional
musicians – after all concerts were their livelihood – and also deprived
the nation of classical music. Myra Hess would have none of that; she described
it as a cultural blackout, and so started one of the lesser-known acts
of glorious defiance of the war. Hess had written to the BBC to complain about
their content – “all we seem to get is Sandy McPherson”. Canadian-born theatre organist McPherson,
incidentally, was playing up to 12 hours a day on the BBC at the start
of the war.
An idea formed to use the National Gallery where
every picture had been taken away for safe keeping while, bizarrely;
every picture frame was left in place. And so on Tuesday, October 10, 1939 Myra Hess,
having badgered the Government for special permission, put on a
lunchtime concert at the Gallery. She said that the limit had been set at 200
people, she was hoping for 40-50. More than a thousand turned up with
long queues outside when the doors closed on 850. Star names played willingly for token fees,
admission was a shilling with proceeds going to the Musicians’
Benevolent Fund. When the war ended there had been 1,698 lunchtime
concerts, Hess had organised each one and performed in 150. Audiences
had been up to 1,750 and more than three quarters of a million people,
many of who had never been to a classical concert before, had attended. A tea room had been started and Hess’s friend
Joyce Grenfell could often be seen “spreading margarine” on the
sandwiches as the weekday lunchtime concerts became an industry,
bringing music to the masses.
At the end of the war Hess said: “If I had died
on the day peace was declared I would have thought my life was
complete.” Patricia Routledge brings the words of Myra to
life in this beautifully staged production. Hess left no diaries or
documentary record of her concerts so her thoughts and words have been
gleaned from her few letters during the war, radio and newspaper
interviews and the few words recorded by the BBC before her broadcast
performances. The worlds and story have been but together by
her great nephew, composer and conductor, Nigel Hess and despite the
sparse material in the hands of Miss Routledge, her words are turned
into a fascinating story. In between internationally acclaimed concert
pianist Piers Lane plays pieces from the 150 lunchtime concerts
performed by Myra herself. The show, like the story of her almost 1,700
lunchtime concerts, is a hidden gem Roger Clarke
|
|
|
|