Eileen Joyce

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Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG (1 January 1908 - 25 March 1991) was an Australian pianist.

Eileen Joyce was the fourth child of seven born to Joseph Thomas Joyce [born 8 September 1875 in Deloraine Tasmania] of Irish extraction and Alice Gertrude May in Zeehan, a mining town in Tasmania. She frequently claimed a birth year of 1910 or 1915, and 21 November is the most commonly seen date, but a search of birth registrations in Tasmania gives her correct birth date of 1 January 1908.

The family had moved to Western Australia by 1911 (her brother Joseph William Joyce was born in Boulder in 1911, as shown in BDM records). Electoral Roll records show that in 1916 the family lived at 33 Hamilton Street, Boulder, in a house owned by Eileen's paternal Uncle Aloysius Joyce. Later the family resided at 113 Wittenoom Street, Boulder.^[1]

Despite their poverty, her parents encouraged her musical development and she began music lessons at age 10.^[2] She attended St Joseph Convent school there and the Calloway Archives has a photograph of her in school uniform dated to c. 1920. Percy Grainger and Wilhelm Backhaus were impressed by her talent and encouraged her to study in Europe. The people of Western Australia contributed to her studies by holding fundraisers to enable her to travel to Germany. In the 1920s she studied at the Leipzig Conservatoire under Artur Schnabel, and at the Royal College of Music in London under Tobias Matthay.

In 1930 she made her debut in London at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert, playing a concerto by Prokofiev, and she went on to perform with the leading orchestras of Europe and the rest of the world. She became one of the BBC’s most regular broadcasting artists, as well as being in demand for concert tours in the provinces. She memorised more than fifty piano concertos and numerous recital programs.

On 16 September 1937 Eileen Joyce married Douglas Leigh Barratt, a stockbroker. They had a son John Douglas Barrett born on 4 September 1939. In 1942 during World War II Joyce's husband was killed on active service off North Africa when the ship he was on was blown up. During the war she performed regularly with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, especially in blitzed areas. Her second partner was Mayfair Film executive Christopher Mann. They were together until his death in 1970.

She subsequently appeared with all principal UK orchestras as well as those of Berlin, France, Italy and New York. She made tours to Australia in 1936 and 1948, South Africa in 1950, the Netherlands and Scandinavia in 1951, Finland and South America in 1952, New Zealand and Soviet Russia in 1958 and 1961 respectively, as well as Yugoslavia and India in 1962. Whilst in Tasmania she performed a solo at the gala opening concert of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

Eileen Joyce contributed to the soundtracks of four films. She was the soloist in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, used to great effect in David Lean's film Brief Encounter (1945). She also provided the playing for the piano music in the 1945 film The Seventh Veil, but this was uncredited in the film. This music again included the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto, and also the Grieg Concerto; as well as solo pieces by Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven (the slow movement of the Pathétique" Sonata assumed a particular importance in the film).

Wherever She Goes [1] was a 1953 black-and-white Australian feature film based on Eileen Joyce's early life in Western Australia. She briefly appears as herself in this film, as she does in the 1946 British film A Girl in a Million [2]. She had a straight acting role as the Aunt in Paul Cox’s 1983 film Man of Flowers [3].

Eileen Joyce was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Cambridge University in 1971. Her gravestone refers to her as "Doctor Eileen Joyce". For her services to music, on the recommendation of the Australian government, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1981.^[3]

Eileen Joyce died in Westerham, England on 25 March 1991.

[edit] Legacy

In the days of her greatest fame, the critical climate was still stuffy, and her mass appeal and her succession of glamorous frocks provoked snobbish reaction and led to her being underrated musically. Her surviving recordings show that such patronising judgments were misplaced: she was a fine musician and a technically magnificent pianist. For example, her 1941 recording of the Étude in A flat, Op. 2, No. 1 by Paul de Schloezer (1841-1898) is considered unsurpassed. This brief three-minute work is so demanding that few pianists attempt it; Sergei Rachmaninoff was said to play it every morning as a warm-up exercise.

Modern virtuoso pianists such as Stephen Hough have expressed amazement that Eileen Joyce is not more highly rated among great 20th century pianists.

In Zeehan, Tasmania, there is a small park called the Eileen Joyce Memorial Park. The University of Western Australia maintains a collection of her documents and some personal effects, as well as a collection of antique instruments in a facility named after her. The house in 113 Wittenoon Terrace has a commemorative plaque.