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Published: Friday, 03 January 2025 at 14:41 PM
The pianist who lifted Britain’s mood during its darkest hour
When Great Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September, 1939, the nation’s cultural life was one of the earliest casualties.
In London, theatres, cinemas and concert halls went dark, to make identification of targets by German bombers difficult. At the flagship National Gallery, treasured paintings were packed away and sent to out-of-town locations, their frames left hanging disconsolately in deserted viewing areas. The Gallery’s director Kenneth Clark later recalled ‘the general emptiness’ of what was left behind, and walking round the vacant rooms ‘in deep depression’.
Soon afterwards, however, Clark received an unexpected visitor – the London-born pianist Myra Hess, an artist of international standing. Might it be possible, Hess wondered, to put on an occasional lunchtime concert at the Gallery, now that it lay unoccupied?
‘For the enjoyment of beauty’
Clark, who feared the building would be requisitioned for administrative purposes, jumped at the suggestion. ‘Why not give one every day?’, he responded. The Gallery should continue to be used for ‘the enjoyment of beauty’, he reasoned, not ‘the filling in of forms or the sticking up of envelopes’.
The necessary preparations clicked quickly into motion. Despite a general ban on public gatherings, permission to stage the concerts was granted. Hess began compiling a list of musicians who would play, and the Steinway company loaned a piano. A wooden platform was erected in Room 36, a glass-domed, octagonal space which proved acoustically excellent – Hess tested it herself, with passages from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata.
By Tuesday 10 October, just five weeks after Britain’s declaration of war, the first National Gallery concert was ready to happen. Hess fretted there had not been time to properly publicise it, but she need not have worried. By 12.20pm, a queue of over 1,000 people stretched around Trafalgar Square, with only 500 chairs available in Room 36 to seat them.
Audiences ate sandwiches between movements
About 800 eventually gained admission, with hundreds more left ticketless on the pavement. Entrance cost a shilling (£4 in today’s money) and, to foster informality, audience members were permitted to come and go or munch on sandwiches between movements.
An extraordinary cross-section of London society was represented. ‘Young and old, smart and shabby,’ Kenneth Clark reported. ‘Tommies in uniform with their tin hats strapped on, old ladies with ear trumpets, musical students, civil servants, office boys, busy public men, all sorts had come.’
At 1pm, Hess stepped on stage, beginning with two brief sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Works by JS Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and Brahms followed, in a programme containing approximately 80 minutes of music. Hess’s inaugural recital confirmed the voracious appetite which existed for cultural gatherings in the embattled atmosphere of wartime London – just under 1,700 National Gallery concerts would be subsequently given.
‘Flying a defiant flag for civilised values’
These took place, incredibly, every weekday between October 1939 and April 1946, by which time the war had ended. A total of 750,000 people attended, with an extraordinary array of musicians, each paid the flat fee of five guineas (about £430 today). Performers included the composer Francis Poulenc, violinist Jacques Thibaud, pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch and numerous string quartets, choirs and orchestras.
Organising and playing in the Gallery concerts was, for Hess, her ‘national service’. It was a Herculean undertaking, flying a defiant flag for civilised values at a period of barbarous destruction. Kenneth Clark never forgot her contribution, nor the morale-boosting inspiration which flowed from her 10 October recital. ‘The moment when she played the opening bars of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” will always remain for me one of the great experiences of my life,’ he later reflected. ‘It was an assurance that all our sufferings were not in vain.’
What else was happening in October 1939?
1st: Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, assesses the situation across Europe one month after Germany’s invasion of Poland. ‘I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,’ says the future prime minister. ‘It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.’
2nd: A pan-American conference establishes a 300 mile-wide neutrality zone around the coast of the continent, excluding Canada and European colonies. Among the stipulations that will be applied to the zone is US president Franklin D Roosevelt’s insistence that no submarine of any countries currently at war – including Germany, France and the UK – will be allowed to enter ports in US territorial waters.
Glorious John in New York
12th: John Barbirolli conducts the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree, a set of variations and fugue by Jaromír Weinberger. The Czech-born Jewish composer has recently arrived in the US after fleeing his home country earlier in the year. Though he is under the impression that his piece is based on an old folk tune, said tune is actually a contemporary popular song.
12th: Just after midnight, the German submarine U-47 fires three torpedoes at HMS Royal Oak, a British battleship at anchor in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The ship sinks rapidly, with the loss of 835 of its crew. Although the outdated vessel is not of great strategic importance, the daringness of the raid proves both a significant propaganda coup for Germany and a blow to British morale.
24th: Prince Joachim Albert of Prussia dies aged 63. As well as being an accomplished violin and cello player, Prince Joachim also became well known as a composer of waltzes, one of which was once conducted at a family gathering by Emperor Wilhelm II. ‘I want my hearers to leave my concerts with the feeling that I have… instilled harmony and beauty into their souls,’ said the Prince about his music.