Summary: <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/25100944/Myra-Hess.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>Myra Hess (1890-1965)<br> <br> <br> <br> On February 25, 1890 – 129 years ago today – the pianist Julia Myra Hess was born in Hampstead in North West London.<br> <br> <br> <br> In a “<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/24649400" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Bob Prescribes</a>” post, I rather energetically took the pianist Keith Jarrett to task for behaving like a brat – for haranguing and cursing at his audiences and often just walking off the stage in mid-set – if, heaven forbid, an audience member should have the unmitigated gall to cough during one of his performances.<br> <br> <br> <br> Expectorate in my presence?! The nerve! <br> <br> <br> <br> In the course of that “<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/24649400" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Bob Prescribes</a>” post, I referenced the pianist Myra Hess, who produced and performed in concerts in London for the duration of World War Two, on occasion performing during bombing raids. Her courage mirrored the indomitable spirit of the British people during the second world war. Coughing? Coughing? Dame Julia Myra Hess, CBE (Commander of the British Empire, 1936), DBE (Dame of the British Empire, 1941) was not just a great artist but a certifiable hero in the truest sense of the word. Coughing? Mr. Jarrett, you couldn’t hold Ms. Hess’ panties. <br> <br> <br> <br> (For our information, Hess herself had a tangential connection to American jazz: in the 1920s, she numbered among her piano students Elizabeth Ivy Brubeck, the mother of Dave Brubeck.)<br> <br> <br> <br> Here then, on the occasion of her 129th birthday, let us honor Myra Hess and in doing so, let us honor the British people in what was, truly, their “Finest Hour.”<br> <br> <br> <br> The youngest of four children, Hess was born and raised in a strict Orthodox Jewish household. She never bought in to the restrictive traditions of Orthodox practice (we are told, for example, that she was constantly fighting with her parents about not being allowed to ride her bicycle on the sabbath!). Though she was a serious and hardworking student and musician, she developed an outrageous sense of humor to go along with her rebellious streak. Her friends referred to her as being “Rabelasian”: meaning “relating to or characteristic of Rabelais or his works” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). What that means is that she took great pleasure in being vulgar, funny, raunchy, and crude; that she was a relentless enemy of hypocrisy and utterly immovable in matters of truth; and that she went out of her way to tweak the social mores of her time. (For example, she delighted in smoking in public at a time when nice young Jewish girls and older female concert artists did not do so!)<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/25101034/OMG.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>O.M.G.<br> <br> <br> <br> Myra Hess was a great pianist. She began her piano lessons at five and quickly climbed the musical education ladder in London. At seven, she entered the Trinity College of Music and became the youngest student to receive a Trinity College Certificate. From there it was off to the Guildhall School of Music and finally, at the age of 12, admittance to the Royal College of Music. <br> <br> <br> <br> Hess made her formal debut in 1907 at the age of 17, when she played Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Saint-Saëns’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the New Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Thomas Beecham; she performed Chopin’s F-sharp minor Nocturne and A minor Etude op. 25 no. 11 as encores.
