Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG (1908–1991) was an Australian pianist whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years.
Her recordings made her popular in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly during World War II. At her zenith she was compared in popular esteem with Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn.Fred Blanks, review of Richard Davis Eileen Joyce: A Portrait, The Sydney Morning Herald, 13–15 April 2001 When she played in Berlin in 1947 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, an eminent German critic classed her with Clara Schumann, Sophie Menter and Teresa Carreño. When she performed in the United States in 1950, Irving Kolodin called her "the world's greatest unknown pianist".Jeremy Siepmann, The Piano. Accessed 1 December 2022.
She became even better known during the 1950s, when she played 50 recitals a year in London alone, which were always sold out. She also performed a series of "Marathon Concerts", playing as many as four concertos in a single evening. Her Mozart was described as "of impeccable taste and feeling", she was a Bach player "of commanding authority", and "a Lisztian of both poetry and bravura". Her playing of the second movement of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto in the films Brief Encounter and The Seventh Veil (both 1945) helped popularise the work.
A 1950 biography of Joyce's early life became a best-seller and was translated into various languages. A feature film, Wherever She Goes (1951), was based on the book, but was much less successful.
Despite her fame, her name slipped from public sight after her retirement in the early 1960s. Her recordings have resurfaced on CD.
Biography Early life and education Eileen Joyce was born in Zeehan, a mining town in Tasmania. She was born in Zeehan District Hospital and not, as many reference works claim, in a tent. She frequently claimed her birthday was 21 November in either 1910 or 1912,Her enrolment papers at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1927 stated her birth date was 21 November 1910. In July 1933, for a feature article in Musical Opinion, she gave her birth date as 21 November 1912. On 21 November 1987, some admirers arranged a "75th birthday" celebration for her at White Hart Lodge, which she attended, but did not let on that she was, in fact, 79 or 80. Eileen Joyce (1908–1991) Timeline but a search of Tasmanian birth registrations shows she was born on 1 January 1908. She was the fourth of seven children of Joseph Thomas Joyce (born 1875), grandson of an Irish immigrant, and Alice Gertrude May.Bach Cantatas website One of her three elder sisters (all born in Zeehan) died shortly after birth, and one of her three younger brothers died at age two.
The family had moved to Western Australia by 1911. They lived firstly in Kununoppin and later in Boulder. (Because of her association with the town, and her later international renown, in 2018, Eileen Joyce was inducted into the Walk of Fame at the Museum of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.) Despite their poverty, her parents encouraged her musical development and she began music lessons at age 10.
She attended St Joseph's Convent School in Boulder where she was taught music by Sister Mary Monica Butler. When she was aged 13, her family's financial circumstances meant that Eileen had to leave school. However, they managed to find enough money to pay for piano lessons with a private teacher, Rosetta Spriggs (a great-grandpupil of Antonín Dvořák). She made Eileen known to a visiting Trinity College examiner, Charles Schilsky, a former violinist with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. Schilsky was extremely impressed with Joyce: he later wrote "There is no word to explain Miss Joyce's playing other than genius. She is the biggest genius I have ever met throughout my travels".
He approached the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Perth and arranged for Eileen to be sent to Loreto Convent in Claremont, Perth, to continue her schooling. Her music teacher there was Sister John More. Joyce entered the 1925 and 1926 Perth Eisteddfods, winning the Grand Championship in 1926. Schilsky continued to make her name known, and wrote a letter to Perth newspapers urging her to be sent to Paris to study.
In May 1926, the Premier of Western Australia, Philip Collier, set up an "Eileen Joyce Fund" with the aim of collecting £1,000 to help Joyce's future career. In August 1926, Percy Grainger, on a concert tour, was introduced to Joyce by Sister John More. He heard her play, and then wrote an open letter to the people of Perth:
He suggested she would have the same celebrity as Teresa Carreño and Guiomar Novaes.
Grainger recommended she study with an Australian master so that her playing would not become "Europeanised" or "Continentalised", and in his view Ernest Hutcheson, then teaching in New York, was the best choice. A short time after Grainger left, Wilhelm Backhaus arrived for a tour of Western Australia. He also heard her and suggested the Leipzig Conservatorium, then regarded as the mecca of piano teaching, would be more suitable (Hutcheson himself had studied there).
From 1927 to 1929, she studied at the Leipzig Conservatorium, firstly with Max Pauer and later with Robert Teichmüller. There, she learnt unusual repertoire such as Max Reger's Piano Concerto and Richard Strauss's Burleske in D minor.Nicholas, Jeremy. Icons - Eileen Joyce. Gramophone, February 2026 Vol. 103 No. 1262, p. 60-61.
She then went to the Royal College of Music in London where, with assistance from Myra Hess, she studied under Tobias Matthay. She also had lessons with Adelina de Lara for a short period in 1931.
Career On 6 September 1930, she made her professional debut in London at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert, playing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3. Her first solo recital in England was on 23 March 1931.Victoria Laurie, "Forgotten keys", The Weekend Australian, 7–8 April 2001 In 1932, she attended Artur Schnabel's masterclasses in Berlin for two weeks. In 1933, she made the first of her many recordings. The session produced Franz Liszt's Transcendental Étude in F minor and Paul de Schlözer's Étude in A-flat, Op. 1, No. 2.
In 1934, for the Proms' 40th season, Joyce played Busoni's Indian Fantasy. She became one of the BBC's most regular broadcasting artists, as well as being in demand for concert tours in the provinces. In 1935, she was a supporting artist for Richard Tauber.
Joyce was the first pianist to play Shostakovich's piano concertos in Britain – the First on 4 January 1936, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. She also played the Second on 5 September 1958, with the same orchestra, under Sir Malcolm Sargent, at the Royal Albert Hall.
In 1938, Eric Fenby said he was thinking of writing a concerto for her, but that did not happen. On 18 July 1940, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) presented a "Musical Manifesto" concert to raise funds, after its founder, Sir Thomas Beecham, said he could no longer afford to fund it. The author J. B. Priestley, a longtime supporter of the orchestra, made a speech, which was widely publicised and which helped attract public support. Three conductors – Sir Adrian Boult, Basil Cameron and Malcolm Sargent – took part, and Joyce played Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, under Cameron's direction. During the war she performed regularly with Sargent and the LPO, especially in blitzed areas. She was a frequent performer in Jack Hylton's "Blitz Tours" during the war,CD Historicals and she appeared regularly at the National Gallery concerts organised by Dame Myra Hess.Pianists appearing in Bedford in the 1940s, colindaylinks.com. Accessed 1 December 2022.
Although small in stature, Joyce was strikingly beautiful, with chestnut hair and green eyes. She changed her evening gowns to suit the music she was playing: blue for Beethoven, red for Tchaikovsky, lilac for Liszt, black for Bach, green for Chopin, sequins for Debussy, and red and gold for Schumann.Peggy Chambers Profile, Women and the World Today]. Accessed 1 December 2022.Profile, Time Magazine. Accessed 1 December 2022. She also arranged her hair differently depending on the composer – up for Beethoven, falling free for Grieg and Debussy, and drawn back for Mozart. Until 1940, she designed her own gowns, but in August she volunteered as a firewatcher, which revived her chronic rheumatism so, on the LPO tours, she had to wear a plaster cast encasing her shoulder and back. She bought gowns specially designed by Norman Hartnell to cover the cast, and she often wore Hartnell thereafter. Richard Bonynge was a music student in Sydney during her 1948 tour, and said: "She brought such glamour to the concert stage. We all used to flock to her concerts, not least because of the extraordinary amount of cleavage she used to show!".
She had numerous recital programs and over 70 concertos in her repertoire, including such works as the Piano Concerto in E-flat major by John Ireland and Rimsky-Korsakov's Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor. In 1940, she made the first recording of the Ireland concerto, with the Hallé Orchestra under Leslie Heward, and performed it at a 1949 Proms concertDrummond, John. Tainted by Experience. Faber and Faber Limited, London, 2000, p. 442. with the LPO under Sir Adrian Boult, celebrating Ireland's 70th birthday. The performance was recorded and released commercially.
However, there were three concertos that Joyce played more than any others, and were her firm favourites: the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, and most of all, the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. She never played any other Rachmaninoff concertos.
She appeared with all the principal UK orchestras as well as many overseas orchestras. She toured Australia in 1936, during which she was the soloist at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra's first Celebrity Concert, conducted by William Cade.ASO/SASO She toured in 1948, and performed the Grieg concerto at the gala opening concert of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, under Joseph Post. In June 1947, she appeared at Harringay Arena in the Harringay Music Festival with Sir Malcolm Sargent.Eileen Joyce – A Timeline, 1908 TO 1991, The Callaway Centre, University of Western Australia.
She had planned to tour the United States in 1940 and 1948, but both tours were cancelled, the first one on account of the war. She finally appeared in Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1950, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. She had earlier appeared with them in Britain in 1948, on the orchestra's first major overseas tour. While her Philadelphia concerts attracted excellent reviews, the New York critics were much less impressed. This was possibly due to the conservative repertoire she chose on Ormandy's strong advice (Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto and Prokofiev's 3rd), rather than the works she would prefer to have played (the Grieg concerto, Rachmaninoff's 2nd and Tchaikovsky's 1st). She was never particularly popular or even well known in the United States, and she never returned.
Her other tours abroad were to New Zealand in 1936 and 1958, France in 1947, the Netherlands in 1947 and 1951, and Germany in 1947, where she played for Allied troops. She was the first British artist for more than a decade to give concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. She toured Germany again in 1949 and 1958, Italy in 1948, Belgium in 1950 and 1952, South Africa in 1950, and Norway in 1950. She had planned to tour Sweden on that trip, but fell down a flight of stairs after performing the Grieg concerto in Oslo, and the remainder of her trip was cancelled. She did, however, visit Sweden in 1951 and 1954, Yugoslavia in 1951, visiting Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana, Brazil and Argentina in 1952, Finland in 1952, Spain and Portugal in 1954, the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1958, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries in 1958, and India and Hong Kong in 1960.