![\"Eileen](\"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/T1619_Eileen-Joyce-Australian-pianist-230x300.jpg\")
I was a junior school boy when Eileen Joyce came to Cape Town and I still recall the thrill of hearing the great Australian pianist playing Beethoven\u2019s Fur Elise as an encore \u2013 and her predilection for wearing a different gown for each work on the program.<\/p>\n
At the time, it would probably have been fair to say that Joyce and Donald Bradman were the two most famous of living Australians. Times change. While Bradman still holds an honoured place in the affections of Ozzies, Joyce\u2019s star has dulled somewhat.<\/p>\n
Recently, I spoke to a number of concertgoers in their 70s and older; they instantly recalled the great pianist. But of eleven teenage piano students I spoke to about Joyce, only three knew who she was. Another wondered if she was in one of Australia\u2019s swimming teams at the Commonwealth Games. Another asked if she was the pianist who was born in a tent!<\/p>\n
This collection of ten CDs incorporating just about everything Joyce recorded over the years will go a long way to rescuing her from an increasing and undeserved obscurity.<\/p>\n
Joyce had a penchant for the music of Grieg with which she was strongly associated A good deal of her celebrity rests on her many accounts of his piano concerto: this one is splendid \u2013 as are her performances of many of the celebrated Norwegian\u2019s\u00a0 miniatures. In Joyce\u2019s hands, they come across as a catalogue of delights, a series of tiny sonic gems which variously gleam, glitter or twinkle. They were recorded for the Parlophone label in 1939.<\/p>\n
During 1938 \u2013 also for Parlophone \u2013 Joyce recorded a number of Rachmaninov\u2019s preludes. They come across like a chaplet of flawless gems.<\/p>\n
I listened with particular interest to her account of Tchaikowsky\u2019s Piano Concerto No 2. \u00a0It\u2019s a frankly terrible performance dating from 1946 with the London Philharmonic conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg. It was never released during Joyce\u2019s lifetime, a completely understandable decision. Its opening is as stodgy as a cake fallen flat – and it was with a sense of relief that I listened to its closing moments. It is 33 wasted minutes.<\/p>\n
(Intriguingly, there\u2019s another early recording of the work by yet another Australian pianist \u2013 Noel Mewton Wood, sadly now almost forgotten. \u00a0His virtuosity is thrilling. It does not so much attract the attention as seize it in a vice-like grip. Mewton Wood died tragically young, committing suicide in the wake of the death of a lover.)<\/p>\n
Incidentally, there\u2019s another Joyce recording now released for the very first time: Chopin\u2019s Waltz in E minor Op. Posth, dating from 1947.<\/p>\n
In choosing the repertoire which made her famous, Joyce was a realist. She played only that over which she had complete physical and emotional control (except, of course, the Tchaikowsky concerto). \u00a0Not for her, say, the Everests of Beethoven\u2019s late sonatas or the intricacies of the preludes and fugues of Shostakovich.<\/p>\n
In public and in the recording studio, she played what she knew she could do as well \u2013 and often better \u2013 than her fellow musicians: miniatures by Grieg, early Beethoven, numbers of contemporary concertos, usually by British composers. Listen to Joyce playing John Ireland\u2019s Piano Concerto in E flat: it\u2019s a model of its kind. She sails through it\u2019s often excruciatingly taxing measures as if to the manner born. And her account of Shostakovich\u2019s Concerto for piano, trumpet and orchestra, with Leslie Howard presiding over the Halle Orchestra, comes up trumps, too.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a very rare recording of Turina\u2019s Rapsodia Sinfonica with orchestra conducted by Clarence Raybould \u2013 and a tidal wave of piano miniatures many of long vanished from the repertoire notwithstanding their charm: Henselt\u2019s Were I a Bird, Farjoen\u2019s Tarantella, Bergman\u2019s Polka Caprice and Schlozer\u2019s Etude in A flat \u2013 and more.<\/p>\n
Some commentators have been snide about Joyce\u2019s work in the baroque revival which opened up a new world for many whether as performers or listeners. Since<\/p>\n
then, much scholarly research has delivered ever more meaningful and stylistically accurate \u00a0recordings of baroque-era keyboard music demonstrating an understanding simply not available when Joyce made these recordings. But without those early efforts, the baroque renaissance may well have been delayed for years, decades even.<\/p>\n
There is, incidentally, a series of remarkable water colours of Joyce, some alone at the keyboard or with co-harpsichord players George Malcolm, Thurston Dart and Denis Vaughan\u00a0 in London\u2019s Royal Festival Hall. These now grace the walls of the Eileen Joyce Studio at the University of Western Australia.<\/p>\n
Ample liner notes include a first rate commentary on Joyce\u2019s early years by David Tunley – and fascinating material by Cyrus Meher-Homji on the technical side of producing Joyce\u2019s many recordings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DECCA 482 6291\u00a0 (10 CDs) reviewed by Neville Cohn I was a junior school boy when Eileen Joyce came to Cape Town and I still recall the thrill of hearing the great Australian pianist playing Beethoven\u2019s Fur Elise as an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[154,97,159,153,155,156,157,158,19,16],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recordings-cds","tag-482-6291","tag-beethoven","tag-chopins-waltz-in-e-minor-op","tag-eileen-joyce","tag-fur-elise","tag-grzegorz-fitelberg","tag-london-philharmonic","tag-mewton-wood","tag-neville-chon","tag-neville-cohn"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Yv33-1w","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/all-mozart-compilation\/","url_meta":{"origin":94,"position":0},"title":"All-Mozart Compilation","author":"reviewer","date":"August 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"various concerto soloists Symphonies 29, 33 & 35 Concertgebouworkest Eduard van Beinum, conductor Eloquence 482 5525\u00a0 (2CD) TPT: 147\u2019 11\u201d reviewed by Neville Cohn \u00a0 Not the least of the many good things flowing from this re-issue of Philips LP recordings in the compact disc format is making available to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Recordings - CDs"","block_context":{"text":"Recordings - CDs","link":"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/category\/recordings-cds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mozart CD Cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newozartsreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/4825525_MozartSymphonies_Concertos_Beinum_master-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/rachmaninov-complete-piano-preludes-1941-1942-recordings\/","url_meta":{"origin":94,"position":1},"title":"Rachmaninov: complete piano preludes: 1941 \u2013 1942 recordings","author":"reviewer","date":"September 1, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Prelude opus 3 no 2; 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