That was Dame Myra Hess performing her own arrangement
of Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. I'm Erica Worth
and welcome to this Pianist Podcast. Today I
am speaking with the British music writer, novelist,
playwright and opera librettist Jessica Duchin,
who has recently released a new biography about
Dame Myra Hess. Jessica, it's so great to have
you on the Pianist Podcast today. Erica, thank
you very much for having me. You're very welcome.
So why don't we kick off by talking about your
new biography of the British pianist Dame Myra
Hess. Why don't you explain how it all came about?
Well, Myra Hess has been one of my heroines for
my entire life. I actually grew up not a million
miles from where she lived in North London. So
she and her circle of friends and her... and
all these people were very much, they weren't
there because they were all dead by then, but
there were blue plaques on the houses. And my
parents, having been great music lovers, I think
must have heard her play quite a few times. And
they would show me the house round the corner
from us where her teacher, Tobias Maté, had lived
and things like that. So when I started studying
the piano seriously as a teenager and listening
to all those fantastic historical recordings,
which were becoming much more recognised and
available at that point, I absolutely fell in
love with her playing. I was quite addicted to
her sound because she had this fantastic sense
of humour and it just bounces through those wonderful
recordings of hers in a way that you don't often
find in the rather more earnest figures necessarily,
although she could out -earnest the best of them
when she wanted to. So I was fascinated by that.
And of course, when I heard about the National
Gallery concerts during World War Two, I thought,
what an amazing woman, what a heroine. Those
concerts meant so much to so many people. So
writing her biography was something that I started
wanting to do about probably about 15 years ago
because I was researching a novel. called Ghost
Variations, which is based on the violinist Yelida
Rani and the way she discovered the existence
of the Schumann Violin Concerto. It turned out
that Yelida and Myra had been duo partners, worked
closely together for 20 years. And they toured
America and they did all sorts together. And
in the one existing biography of Dame Myra Hess,
there was no mention of this whatsoever. Goodness.
And I started wondering what else was missing.
So I felt she needed a new biography and I had
the chance to do it. So I was very lucky. I mean,
yes, I think this is the first new biography
in 50 years. It is. It's 50 years this year since
the last one was published. My goodness. My goodness.
And how did tell me about the research? Was it
an easy ride or did you go deeper and deeper?
Tell us about it. Researching a book like this,
it's a bit like having a sort of set of interlocking
universes. And you lift the lid on one universe
and you suddenly find there's another one underneath.
If you imagine them as those sort of steamer
stacks that you can get to cook your vegetables,
it's just one opening up on another all the time.
So I thought it was going to be straightforward
because there was so much stuff. But because
there is so much stuff. It's actually incredibly
difficult because you have to work out what to
put in, what to leave out and what also might
be missing from that. And then you follow one
lead and you suddenly end up down a humongous
rabbit hole. So most of the stuff is in the British
Library. But of course, just after I started
researching, it was a pandemic and the British
Library was closed. Of course. So by absolute
serendipity, Nigel Hess, the composer who is
Dame Myra's great nephew, had returned to him
from someone else who had borrowed them in the
distant, distant past, a couple of crates of
private archive. And he just brought them all
round to my house. So I had this incredible collection
sitting in my conservatory for two or three years
with Myra's photo albums and her American diaries,
which that other biography said didn't exist
anymore. And I had her passport in my conservatory.
Oh, that's amazing. So you had a whole library
in your conservatory. Basically, I did. And it
was sheer luck. It's amazing how these things
sometimes just fall into place through serendipity.
Amazing. Amazing. So how long from beginning,
when you took it seriously, from taking it seriously
to the final product, how long did that take?
Well, I must have signed the contract just before
the pandemic began. OK. So it would have been
2019, the very start of 2020. I'm not sure. It
must have been pre -pandemic because I did get
into the library before it shut. I just had notes
of must go back and look at this again and then
whoop. Wow, amazing. That's like at least five
years then because it was released last year
to coincide with the 135th anniversary of her
birth, yes? That's right. It was last November
actually was also the 60th anniversary of her
death. Okay. And how many pages? What's in store
for somebody who's tempted? Oh, you're going
to show it. Well, we can't. I can't show you
because we're recording, but it is about 420
pages. Oh, that's doable. It weighs a ton as
hardback, but it's going to come out in paperback.
Yes. Yes. Was it, so you obviously, did you find
you had way too many words? Oh, gosh, yes. When
I submitted the manuscript, I found myself saying
to my lovely, lovely publishers, Kahn and Averill,
it's not actually twice as long as I suggested
it was going to be, but it is probably 150 ,000
words rather than 100. Oh, goodness. They thought
about it all for a while and they said to me
eventually, well, we want this to be the definitive
biography of Dame Myra Hess. And if it's longer
than planned, it's longer than planned. And we'll
just put the cover price up. Oh, that's very
nice. It really was. Yes. Well, I was actually
going to ask you, was it easy to find a publisher?
Again, it was serendipity. Because I had tried
one or two of the big music book publishers.
And honestly, Erica, if I hear the words, it
doesn't really fit into our list once more. I
think I'm actually going to get a machine gun.
It's the scourge of writers' lives, this thing
of publishers saying it doesn't fit into our
list. But then one day I was at a Royal Philharmonic
Society event and I ran into someone who I had
known my entire professional life since I was
in my first job in music publishing. And we had
a bit of a catch up and he said, oh, I'm I've
officially retired. But my retirement job is
I'm now editorial director of Khan and Averill.
So this was a distinguished publisher of books
on music. They've got a fantastic piano list,
especially. And it's been it was given to it
was kind of bequeathed on deathbed to its current
proprietor who has reconstituted it all. And
it's now publishing new books again. I thought,
gosh, I have several of their books on my shelf,
including some of those piano titles. And I thought
that would be the perfect place for Lyra. So
I sent him a pitch and an outline for what I
wanted to do. And to my amazement, they went
for it. That's fantastic, Jessica. That's wonderful.
Well, I'm sure readers, listeners here will be
keen to, you know, go out and get it. And of
course. your other novels that they've all had
a classical classical music theme to them haven't
they yes well could you hang on while i let the
cat out of this room because she's good jessica
i know how important cats are to cat owners sorry
my cat is my personal assistant personal assistant
i do understand that anyway back to your other
novels Yes. They all have a classical music theme.
Yes, they do. There are seven of them at current
count, seven novels, as well as four non -fiction,
including Myra, on top of that. The novels, the
first few were published by Hodder and Stoughton
quite some time ago. I think the one to mention
is Alicia's Gift because it's about a child prodigy
pianist. And I was able to put into that book
many, many, many things that I had observed among
the various child prodigy pianists I'd observed
over the years. And I'm very, I was very, very
thrilled when the Canny Mason family told me
that this is a book that inspired them. And in
fact, Jennifer has a series on Instagram. She
does a little series of videos about books she
loves because she's very literary. And the first
one of those. of those little videos was dedicated
to elise's gift so she she had with her a copy
of this little book it's the best thumbed book
i have ever seen in my life they've stuck it
together with steve that plastic i think they've
all read it no doubt Yeah, apparently they've
all read it repeatedly. Fantastic. I remember
Isetta telling me in an interview that she had
read it over and over again as a schoolgirl and
it had kind of kept her company when she was
a pianist on her own growing up. I mean, not
really on her own because she had all her siblings,
but in a school, I think you can possibly feel.
a bit lonelier than that. Wonderful, wonderful.
And there's a book, Immortal, all about Beethoven,
yes? Yes, that is the most recent of the novels.
It's about Beethoven's immortal beloved. Now,
it seems that researchers are kind of 90 % sure
who it was. But there's always that 10 % of doubt
because we can't prove it because we weren't
under the bed at the time. And it's the only
way to prove whether the story is true is to
do a DNA test between Beethoven and the woman
who may have been his illegitimate daughter.
We don't know for sure. I don't think anyone's
going to do that anytime soon. My goodness. But
it was a fascinating, extraordinary story. And
I got really quite obsessed with it, as people
do. I mean, people go up completely gaga about
this story. And you wouldn't believe some of
the pushback I've had from people who are convinced
it was somebody else. But that's life. That's
the way it is. And that's why I've done it as
nonfiction, because I don't feel able to say
definitively this is absolutely... certainly
what happened yeah because we just we can't do
that oh how interesting um but I'm hoping that
there will be a way of republishing this book
soon because there's a Beethoven anniversary
coming up in 2027 yes it was done originally
for the anniversary in 2020, but of course it
came out into the middle of a pandemic where
there were no Beethoven concerts and no, any
other concerts either. So. Of course. That was
a bit of a shame. Everything was, it just came
out into a cultural wasteland, which was never
the idea. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You're also
a librettist and you've collaborated with the
composer, Roxanna Panufnik. Most recently with
the opera Dahlia, which sounds, it's got an intriguing
story. Yes, Dahlia was commissioned by Garsington
for its huge production with a youth company,
children's chorus, amateur chorus, adult chorus,
the Philharmonia Orchestra, five professional
soloists. And we had an amazing... child soloist.
She's a teenager. I think she's studying music
at Cambridge now and has gone on to do that since
then. It is a story about a Syrian refugee girl
who is fostered in a small British town that's
obsessed with cricket. and discovers she has
a talent for cricket. So she is both a girl in
a boy's world and a Syrian in Britain, dealing
with the sort of things that that throws at her.
So there was a great deal of research to do about
that, which Rox and I both undertook with great
eagerness. research Syrian musical idioms. We
had an Arabic singer playing Dalia's mother,
who was absolutely amazing and did an incredible
improvisation section. And the baddie is, in
fact, the person who sang the baddie said, he's
the nastiest character I've ever had to play.
And he was a typical voter of certain. certain
strands on the extreme right wing, I would say,
of the imperialist cricket section. Anyway, there
we go. Must be great to play a baddie. I've always
thought that. He did look like he was having
some fun with it. Oh, my goodness. I mean, your
life in writing is so... diverse you write for
and about music dividing your time between journalism
biography fiction and stage works and of course
you write for pianist magazine um and it's usually
the cover interview which means you've interviewed
dozens if not hundreds of pianists i mean tell
us about that interviewing all these famous pianists
um well it's one of my great joys because the
the reason i went into music journalism is because
I found I wanted to sit and talk to them. I wanted
to ask, how do you do that? What makes you tick?
How are you able to create these extraordinary
performances? So I've been lucky enough to meet
and interview some of my teenage heroes. Wow.
Yes, I'm sure. And I'm sure you've gone all over
the world to interview them as well, haven't
you? I've gone to some very funny places to interview
them. I remember going to Barcelona to interview
Grigori Sokolov in the days when he still occasionally
could be persuaded to do interviews. But he wanted
to be interviewed in his dressing room after
a concert in this amazing, wonderful Gaudi concert
hall in Barcelona. Wow. I took a Russian -speaking
friend with me to translate because Mr Sokolov
had asked for a translator. And we started the
recital, this being Spain, and he started about
nine o 'clock in the evening. So by the time
we were set up after however many encores it
was that he played, it was probably pushing midnight.
And by the time we got out into Barcelona in
the wee hours, it was so late that even in Spain,
all the restaurants were shut. I was okay, but
my poor translator was ravenous and there was
nothing for him to eat. Did Sokolov say some
interesting things or was he terribly quiet?
Oh, Sokolov was fantastic. He was still on a
bit of a high after the concert, which is why
he wanted to talk then. Amazing. And he was utterly
wonderful. And then we ended up having breakfast
with him the next morning because he was in our
hotel as well. And he walked in. So my friend
went and got him. How lovely. How wonderful.
What about the elusive Martha Argerich? Have
you managed to interview her? This was very funny.
It was an article originally for BBC Music magazine.
Yes. The editor phoned me up. This is probably
about 15 years ago. And he said, we'd like you
to go to Rome and follow Marta Argerich around
until she agrees to talk to you. And I just I
laughed in his face. I said, Marta Argerich is
never going to agree to an interview. She just
doesn't do them. And he said, well, would you
go anyway and try? So I thought, well, OK. I
don't mind going to Rome. I don't mind following
Marta Argerich around. But I was very, very anxious
about this because, you know, to any pianist,
Marta is basically God. And I know that she is,
she's very sensitive. She's very nervous. She's
very bound up with, you know, whatever her next
performance is going to be and whether she can
go ahead and do it, those kinds of things. So
I was, again, I was very, very lucky because
I was invited by her agent to come along to the
rehearsal in Rome and to try and meet her just
after that. So it turned out I knew both the
conductor and the leader of the orchestra who
had both worked with the LPO a lot. My husband
is in the LPO. get to meet a lot of people that
way. And the conductor introduced me to Marta
as a friend of his. So she didn't actually run
away. She thought she loved him and she thought,
well, I assume she thought that that meant that
she could trust me and she didn't actually run
away. So I said some niceties and I thought it
might be useful for her to know that actually
I'm not, I'm not, a sort of clueless journalist
who can't tell one end of the piano from another.
So I said, well, I studied piano. I wanted to
be a pianist myself once. And she, she said,
are you used to play? Well, why did you stop?
She said. So actually she is willing to. This
is great. And I told her why I stopped, which
was that I couldn't deal with the nerves. And
at this point I could just see something. clicked
in her and she said i get very nervous as well
and after that she was really sweet to me she
was so kind and so nice and eventually after
the the rehearsals finished her agent sort of
pushed me into her dressing room and she said
okay five minutes and i managed to extend it
to about nine five minutes oh that's wonderful
i love it oh my god it was it was more than i
expected it really was gosh well i mean it just
goes to show doesn't it that i mean As someone
who interviews all these pianists, it does help
that you know about how to play the piano. Well,
I don't see how you can really interview pianists
unless you can play, because it's such a specific
kind of area of musicianship. There's no other
artist, really, who is totally self -reliant
like that. Yes, yes. And you studied, obviously,
yourself quite seriously. Yeah, I did music at
Cambridge. And while I was there, I was having
lessons in London with Joan Havel, who's one
of the top teachers at Guildhall. Of course,
yes. I was very lucky. Someone introduced me
to her when I was in my first year at Cambridge.
And I started going to her and she said, well,
I think I need to change just about everything
you're doing. She said. And she proceeded to
turn my technique around, you know, quite extraordinarily.
She's a wonderful, wonderful teacher. And I loved
her to pieces. But was there at any point you
wanted to be a professional pianist? Oh, yeah.
I mean, I definitely did. I can't I can't imagine
now what planet I was on. I think I must have
had delusions of grandeur or something, but I
was pretty obsessive about it and spent most
of my time at university just trying to. find
somewhere to practice oh yeah i think it's when
we enter the real world and we see what's out
there and all that talent and everything that
you take it takes as you said nerves it's a huge
thing isn't it Well, it really is. And I mean,
for one thing, I certainly didn't have the talent
to be a professional pianist, because by the
age of 23, if you are not circling the world
playing Rachmaninoff 3, you are never going to
make it. Not necessarily Rachmaninoff 3, but
the equivalent of that. And you need so much
more than talent. You need the temperament to
do it. You need that competitive streak. You
need the guts to just jump in and do things and
to take risks and push the boat out. And, you
know, if you're a nervous wreck two weeks before
a recital, you're probably not. I mean, there
are pianists who are nervous wrecks two weeks
before a recital, and they do it anyway, but
they actually want to live like that. There's
something they're getting from it. And I just
thought to myself, I don't actually have to live
like this. The stress level for that. Yeah, I
just couldn't hack it. And I cried for six months
after making that decision. Oh, my God. But,
you know... I sometimes go to concerts nowadays
and I hear these incredible pianists who are
out there. I think, thank God I gave up. Yeah,
I do understand that completely. I know. I'm
always in awe of them. I don't know how they
do it. And there are some amazing talents out
there. I'm just really, really struck by them.
I mean, you are completely involved in music.
You're married to a violinist, as you said, who
plays with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
So you've got lots in common there. Well, it's
funny because I don't think I would last even
10 seconds in an orchestra. I'm full of admiration
for the tenacity and the determination that Tom...
puts into his work every day and it's a deeply
anti -social profession so you know I dream of
the day when he might even retire and we can
have a proper social life Oh, why? Because he's
touring a lot? Because he's playing a lot in
the evening? Yes. They rehearse a lot of evenings.
They rehearse a lot of weekends. They perform
a lot of evenings and weekends, obviously. But
rehearsals come into this as well. And there's
really no concession made to anything. You want
family life. You want evenings. You want Sunday
lunch. Forget it. Oh, my goodness. So it's not,
and probably, I would say he's probably on average
away for about two months every year in total.
Okay. With the touring. So it's not a friendly
job, but then you go to their concerts and...
And they raise the roof and they're amazing.
And I just think, you know, what a glorious thing
it must be for him to be part of this amazing
machine that is one of the world's great orchestras.
And I know he gets a real kick out of it. Yes.
Do you play together? Do you play together? We
did some concerts together a long time ago, but
probably around 2004, 2005. There were certain
pieces that I'd always had to be in my bonnet
about wanting to play. When I was a student,
I had a lovely duo partner at university, but
of course, then went off and did other things.
And there were things that we had never played
or never dared to play. One of them was the César
Frank sonata. Very ambitious. Well, I just had
this bee in my bonnet about it. I wanted to play
that damn thing. I wanted to prove I could do
it. So we learnt it and we played it and we played
it really well. And then we did a whole recital
programme where we centred it on the 4A, A major
and the Elgar. This 4A and Elgar had a lot in
common, actually, including mustaches. And in
the end, we did a recital of this programme together
in the Elgar Birthplace Museum on Elgar's birthday.
And Elgar's great niece, Margaret, was in the
audience. And she said we moved her to tears.
So that was very nice. It's a wonderful memory.
And I'm glad we did that. How wonderful. That
sounds wonderful. That was a lot of hard work,
I'm sure. It was rather. Well, now, as we're
approaching the end of our lovely interview,
I thought I'd go kind of towards the more lighthearted
side of things with some questions that I'd like
to pose to you. And let me know. Let's see how
you respond. So here's the first one. As you
do still practice the piano, I believe, if you
could play only one composer from now on, who
would it be? That's pretty tough. I think, you
know, assuming that I could improve my technique
from its current Slough of Despond, I think it
would be Chopin. Really? I think that the way
Chopin feels under the fingers is like nothing
else on earth. And there's such a wealth of a
whole imaginative world in that music. I think
I would be very happy to. That's a really interesting
answer. How does it feel to you? It's very sensual.
There are ways that he sort of twists you off.
He needs you to kind of be flexible and to move
your hands and angle things and direct things
and balance the voices that demands enormous
sensitivity and enormous, almost dancer -like
flexibility. So when you get something right.
It finally it feels right somehow. Yes. But you
have to go through an enormous process to get
to the point where it feels right. But it's just
lovely. When I was a student as my I did a sort
of one year postgrad that was half research,
half performance. And I did my dissertation on
the third ballad and I played it in my recital
that I had to give. And that was deeply satisfying.
Wonderful. Great answer there. I love it. One
pianist, dead or alive, you'd travel long and
far to hear. Oh, that's easy. Myra Hess. I'd
so have loved to hear her play live. I was recently
involved in... an evening at the musical museum
in Brentford where they had a store of her piano
rolls that she made for duo art in the 1920s
and they they had a push -up machine that they
attached to a Steinway and they played Myra Hess
playing Myra Hess and I was sitting next to this
thing that was in effect Myra Hess playing the
piano it was phenomenal I have never heard a
Brahms opus 190 number four like that power of
this thing yes it's glorious oh fantastic okay
next question one pianist dead or alive you'd
love to interview or interview again Well, there's
a lot of them, but guess what I'm going to say?
I'm going to say Myra Hess again because I think
she must have been a dream to interview. Admittedly,
she could wind interviewers around her little
finger. If you listen to some of the things on
YouTube, there's a recording from the 1950s from
American radio and from the 1960s where she's
interviewed by John Amos just in her last years.
And she has such charm and she's so funny and
she's so expressive. There's a wonderful bit
where she says to John Amos, you know, one day
in these young pianist recitals, I'm going to
stand up and I'm going to say vive la sport.
She said she'd rather watch horse racing than
some of the young pianists today. Vive la sport.
That's funny. She had quite a sense of humour,
didn't she? She had a wonderful sense of humour.
Very, very earthy. Her sense of humour was so
naughty that it was quite hard to find written
examples of it because people didn't print it.
Oh my goodness. Okay. Penultimate question here.
One musician, dead or alive, who would be the
subject of your next biography? That would be
telling. I haven't started on anything else yet,
but there are quite a few people I would love
to write about. And there's also some unfinished
business that I would like, things I want to
do and want to finish before I die. Oh, my goodness.
OK, let's stop there then. Last question. If
you weren't a writer, what would you be? Well,
I don't want to say I'd be a pianist because
I probably wouldn't. If I could do anything else,
I think I'd like to be a doctor. I think I lost
a lot of my close family members to cancer and
I think I would like to be a cancer specialist
and try and cure people. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah.
OK, Jessica, I think we've got to the end of
our chat here. It was so interesting. Well, thank
you so much, Erica. It's really lovely to talk
to you. I hope this has been entertaining for
people. I'm sure it has. When do you think the
paperback of the Hess will be out? I think that
it will be quite soon. Okay. Okay, great. I'll
keep you posted. All right. Well, thank you,
Jessica, and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Thanks, you too. Yeah, look forward to speaking
to you again soon. Okay, take care and thank
you. Bye. Bye -bye. That was the last movement
from Schumann's Carnaval and it was performed
by Myra Hess. Pianist podcasts are free and a
really good way to support what we do is by subscribing
to Pianist. Visit our website at pianistmagazine
.com and listen to us on YouTube by searching
Pianist Magazine. And don't forget to sign up
to our newsletter, which is full of extra playing
tips and useful information. Go to pianistmagazine
.com to find out how to sign up.