Aussie Bloggers

Have you heard of Eileen Joyce? Any bells ringing for you? I can guarantee that most Australians have never heard the name or one of this country’s most famous pianists of all times. How can her memory just have faded away? She only died in 1991 yet her passing went almost unnoticed in Australia.

Eileen Joyce was born in a tent in the mining town of Zeehan, Tasmania in 1912. Her family were poor as her father struggled to find labouring work. They moved to Western Australia when Eileen was only 2. She began piano lessons at the local convent and displayed such talent that she was later encouraged to study piano at the University of Western Australia. She was discovered by famous musician Percy Grainger and, with the financial support of her community, was sent to Europe to study further.

In 1930 she made her professional debut as a concert pianist playing with the London Symphony Orchestra and by 1931 she had given her first professional solo performance. She had a remarkable career playing all throughout Europe. During the war she played concerts at hospitals and for all those affected by the blitz in London and became well known to the English public.

She was a beautiful woman with a sense of style. She was dressed by Norman Hartnell in his lovely designer gowns. She seems to have been quite a ‘driven’ woman, working constantly, and developing her own way of doing things. She had a reputation for changing her gowns often during a concert and they were all colour coded to match the composer. She wore blue for Beethoven, green for Chopin and so on.

She became famous across the world and was invited to record for the soundtrack of “Brief Encounter” that famous war time tear jerker. By 1953 her early life was turned into a movie called “Wherever She Goes” in which she played herself. She was subsequently offered a small role in other films such “Girl in a Million.”She retired in 1960 although she sometimes appeared at charity concerts. She died in 1991 in England.

“Once you stop playing,’ she had once said, ‘you are forgotten.’ That seems to be very true. While serious musicians speak of her exceptional abilities critics of the time seem to have been more dismissive. Instead they talk of her popularity with the common man and her love of fashion as though they were things that should cause her talent to be ignored. Australia, as a comparatively young country, does not have many world famous pianists to claim. Eileen Joyce spent much of her adult life overseas but she firmly clung to her Australian roots. She donated $37000 to the University of WA to support music students as she herself had been supported. Other than the scholarship, which she herself established, there is nothing left to remember her by in Australia other than a little memorial park in Zeehan.

Why not watch Brief Encounter and listen to the Rachmaninoff theme woven throughout the film?

Perhaps listen to the recording of her playing Debussy’s famous Clair de Lune. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQfYRCsevj8)

Then tell me that you can forget her.

More information about Eileen Joyce is available here: www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/IMP0060b.htm ; http://www.naxos.com/artistinfo/bio12585.htm : http://www.binaryblue.com.au/LPA/eileenjoyce2.html

Anne Maybus is the owner of Beauty Banquet and passionate blogger at The Tall Poppy.