<\/p>
When Great Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September, 1939, the nation\u2019s cultural life was one of the earliest casualties. <\/strong><\/p> 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\u2019s director Kenneth Clark later recalled \u2018the general emptiness\u2019 of what was left behind, and walking round the vacant rooms \u2018in deep depression\u2019.<\/p> Soon afterwards, however, Clark received an unexpected visitor \u2013 the London-born pianist Myra Hess<\/a><\/strong>, 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?<\/p> Clark, who feared the building would be requisitioned for administrative purposes, jumped at the suggestion. \u2018Why not give one every day?\u2019, he responded. The Gallery should continue to be used for \u2018the enjoyment of beauty\u2019, he reasoned, not \u2018the filling in of forms or the sticking up of envelopes\u2019.<\/p> 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<\/a><\/strong> company loaned a piano. A wooden platform was erected in Room 36, a glass-domed, octagonal space which proved acoustically excellent \u2013 Hess tested it herself, with passages from Beethoven<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s \u2018Moonlight\u2019 Sonata.<\/p> ‘For the enjoyment of beauty’<\/h2>