Patrick Bade
Myra Hess: Concert Life Under the Blitz

Patrick Bade - Myra Hess Concert Life Under the Blitz  - [Wendy] Morning everyone. Morning Patrick, again.

• Morning, Wendy.

• [Wendy] Morning, Patrick. Good. All right, I’m going to just say morning to everybody and now, hi, over to you Patrick, looking forward, thanks.

• Shall I start straight away then? Ready?

• [Wendy] Why don’t you start Patrick? When you’re ready.

Visuals and audio are displayed throughout the presentation.

• Yeah, I will. Right, well tonight I’m going to pay tribute to great musicians who enormously boosted the moral of the British people during the darkest times of the Second World War and that’s Dame Myra Hess, and Sir Henry Wood… I had a lovely email this morning from Raphael Langham, telling me that when he was a boy, his mother, his very first concert, was during the Second World War, he was taken by his mother to hear Myra Hess and it made a great impression, and it launched his lifelong love of music, he’s one of many I’m sure, many, many people whose lives were changed for the better by these two people in particular, Myra Hess. These drawings of Myra Hess and Henry Wood are actually made by my aunt, my Aunty Nell, and she was a music student in London during the war at the Royal Academy, and she kept diaries, and notebooks with little sketches of her life, you can see her sitting on top of a Nazi bomb on the cover of one of her notebooks, and she had an autograph book, and I think pretty well everybody I’m talking about tonight, is in that autograph book, she went to all the concerts, she went to the Proms, and she used to make little drawings, and then she’d get the artist to sign the drawings.

So, this is my aunt’s drawing of Myra Hess and Myra Hess has signed it underneath. Here are more drawings of musical life in London, by my Aunty Nell. Now, The Blitz is sort of entered British mythology I suppose, London was bombed for the first time on September the 7th 1940, and then it was bombed pretty well every night until May the 11th, it was a very, very terrible time, tens of thousands of people died and there were huge sways of London that were totally destroyed, famous stories of people sheltering in the underground, and of course, the miracle of St. Paul’s Cathedral remaining more or less intact, in the huge sea of ruins, by the end of The Blitz. Now, in this image at the top, we have a man called Tobias Matthay, and he was a very inspiring professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and he had his, he had three favourite pupils, and they were three beautiful, talented, young Jewish girls from North London, it was Irene Scharrer, Myra Hess and Harriet Cohen, I’m not going to talk much about Harriet Cohen tonight, but I would…

On the list I’ve sent you, there is a biography of her, by Helen Fry, she had a fascinating life, she was a really extraordinary woman, she was a great beauty, a real femme fatale actually, she was the cousin of Irene Scharrer, but actually, she was not that close to the other two, it was Irene Scharrer and Myra Hess were really like sisters, and Irene Scharrer of course I’ve known her, my sister and I have known her from our earliest childhood, ‘cause my grandparents had a record, it was a best-selling record of her playing the Litolff Scherzo and we used to dance around the house to that music. Myra Hess, she made her debut in 1907 as a young girl, and she established a big international reputation in the 1920s and '30s, by the late '30s, she was one of the most respected pianists in the world. And in 1939, she signed the most lucrative contract of her career, it was going to take her on a seven month tour of United States and Australia, it was to begin in November 1939, but when the war broke out, she felt that she couldn’t leave the country.

For me, this is a very remarkable act of courage, that she could’ve done what Sir Thomas Beecham did, she could’ve scampered off, and she could’ve had a very comfortable, safe, lucrative life, on the other side of the Atlantic throughout the Second World War, instead she chose to remain in Britain, there was of course no guarantee that Britain would win the war, would not be defeated, would not be invaded, and as as Jewish woman, I think that was an act of great courage for her to stay, but she was quickly very dismayed at the lack of any kind of decent music, and this is a big difference, it kind of fascinates me really, and I’m going to talk about it more in another talk about the musical life in Germany. You know, culture is, we think of it as a civilising thing, that the Brits have never really been big on culture with a capital “C” or “K” in the way that the Germans were, and it’s… You know, that both opera houses in London, well it’s extraordinary that there are only two full-time opera houses in the whole country in 1939, they both closed immediately, all cultural life shutdown, and Myra Hess thought this was terrible, she wrote the BBC and she talked to Sir Kenneth Clark, the very dynamic, young director of The National Gallery.

The National Gallery had been emptied, here are all the pictures in The National Gallery, on their way to a mine in Wales, where they were kept for safety throughout the Second World War. So, you had a huge empty building in the centre of London, and Myra Hess said to Sir Kenneth Clark, “You know, could we possibly do concerts in The National Gallery? Could we do one a week?” And Kenneth Clark said, “Why not do one every day?” And in fact, that’s what they did, from the 10th of October 1939, six days a week, only Sunday there was not a concert, there were concerts all the way through until 1946, there was not one single day that was missed, so in all, that was 1,698 concerts, and as I said, the very first one on the 1st of October, there were sort of the usual health & safety hurdles, and the government said, “You can’t have more than 200 people.” But in fact, well over 1,000 people turned up to the first concert and they in fact were allowed to go in, so it was a real standing room, only. Now, another great irony is that the music for the very first concert in The National Gallery was entirely from enemy nations, the first programme was Scarlatti, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and it ended of course with Dame Myra’s signature piece, the Bach, “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”.

And they kept that up actually all the way through the war, as with the Proms, and I’ll mention this later. The most performed composer in Britain, throughout the war was Beethoven, in the Proms, that was followed by Wagner, and at The National Gallery, it was followed by Mozart, Schubert, and so on. So, all actually, inverted commas, enemy music. So, I’m playing, my first musical excerpt is this wonderfully poised, serene account of a chorus from Cantata by Bach, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, arranged by Myra Hess herself, this really did become her signature piece, I had this on… I must’ve been six years old when I bought this on a '78 RPM record that I still have. If you go on YouTube, you can find film of Myra Hess, there are two films of her, made in The National Gallery, there’s one of a complete performance of Beethoven’s Appassionata, and there’s another very famous documentary, wartime documentary called “Listen to Britain”, and it’s very moving actually to see her playing, and the camera pans over the audience, Kenneth Clark in his memoirs says how moving it was, that he felt that the audience were like some mediaeval audience listening to some great religious leader, they had this wrapped expression on their faces.

And, one of the attractions of the concerts, was apparently they had the best sandwiches in London, they cost very little the concerts, I think they cost a shilling or something like that, and then you could go, and you could have excellent sandwiches, so you could kill two birds with one stone. And Dame Myra herself performed in 146 of the concerts, but all the top musical talent resined in Britain, took part in these concerts, one of the advantages of The National Gallery was that it had very deep, strong cellars, so when there were daylight bombing raids, they went down into the cellars, and The National Gallery was hit several times, there was just one occasion when… As I said, there was not one day that was missed, but there was one day when there was a big, unexploded bomb in the museum, so they moved to South Africa House for that particular bomb day, there was another occasion where in the middle of Beethoven’s Rasumovsky quartet, another unexploded bomb went off, but they just continued as though nothing was happening.

Oh, in the film of her playing the Appassionata, this really bothered me when I watched it the first time, there was this big empty frame behind her on the wall, and I knew I recognised the frame, so it really bothered me until I managed to remember which picture normally is in that frame, which is of course the Pollaiuolo Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, which had gone off to Wales. Myra Hess was a very warm, much, much loved personality, she had a wonderful sense of humour, there are many delightful stories about her, Joyce Grenfell was a big friend, and she, in her memoir, she tells lots of very funny stories, she liked to dress up as Queen Victoria and do a spoof of Queen Victoria, and she had a particularly close relationship with the Griller Quartet, and they called her “Aunty”, and she always used to sign her letters to members of the Griller Quartet, “Aunty”. So, I’m going to play you a very remarkable recent discovery of… This is from a live concert during the Second World War with Myra Hess and the Griller Quartet playing the Brahms Piano Quintet. Now, the Germans were constantly putting down the Brits as being people without culture, they referred to England, England as “Das Land ohne Musik”, and this did actually sort of get under people’s skin a bit, and the BBC put on a programme, which was built as a response, and it was a compilation of British music, and British poetry, and it was presented by Myra Hess, and the actor Marius Goring, and it was billed as, “Britain’s reply to Goring & Hess, by Hess & Goring.”

Now, we move onto Sir Henry Wood, who by this time was a very vulnerable character in British music, he had founded the Prom Concerts nearly 50 years earlier, 1895, so in fact, it was in 1944 was his 50th season, it was his last season, he actually died before the end of the season. The Prom Concerts from the 1890s, up to the 10th of May 1941, they took part in the Queen’s Hall in Langham Place, this was much loved for it’s wonderful acoustic. This is what it looked like before destruction, and it was completely burned out by a fire bomb on the penultimate night of The Blitz, that’s the 10th of May 1941, it was a particular tragedy because the London Philharmonic Orchestra were due to give a concert in London the next day and all their instruments were stored in the concert hall, and they were all destroyed, so they actually had to put out, the BBC put out a plea on the radio for anybody who had instruments, to donate them to the London Philharmonic, which they did.

So, they then moved over to the Albert Hall, which is I’m sure you know, absolutely huge, it can take 8,000 people, and it doesn’t have a wonderful acoustic, in fact, in the past in particular, it had a terrible acoustic, Sir Thomas Beecham said, “It was the only hall in the world, where you can be sure of hearing a new piece of music twice.” And he upset a lot of people in America by giving an interview in saying that he did hope that the Nazis would be able to destroy the Albert Hall, as it was such a monstrosity. So, I’m going to play you first of all, of these BBC radio announcers, they’re such period pieces, here is the introduction to the Prom Season, over the airwaves from the BBC.

Video plays.

• [BBC Announcer] I am speaking from the Royal Albert Hall London, where the scene is all set for the opening night of what my friend CB Reese in the programme notes calls “The Penultimate Period in a half century of music making, under the inspiration and direction of Sir Henry Wood.” In other words, Sir Henry’s 49th season of Promenade Concerts, it’s a nine week season this year, instead of the usual eight and as in the case of last year, there are two orchestras, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leader Jean Pougnet, which will be playing during the first four weeks, when Sir Henry will have with him as associate conductor, Basil Cameron. And the BBC Symphony Orchestra, leader Paul Beard, which will be playing during the last five weeks, Sir Adrian Boult sharing the conductorship with Sir Henry.

• Well, every concert would begin in those days with the national anthem, and the audience would join in with the orchestra. Sir Henry was much, much loved by all the orchestras who worked with him, his style was very different, 'cause it was an era of very great conductors, , Toscanini, Klemperer, Mengelberg, Beecham and so on, but his style was quite different from the sort of screaming tantrums, I don’t know if you ever heard recordings of Toscanini having terrible screaming hissy-fits with the orchestra, or even the… Although, Beecham was popular with the musicians, but he was very sharp-tongued, he had a very cruel acerbic wit, whereas… I’m going to play you a bit of a rehearsal during the war, with the London Philharmonic and Henry Wood, and you feel that he’s not a dictator, he’s treating the members of the orchestra with the greatest respect, really treating them as friends.

• [Sir Henry Wood] Outside players at each disc. Here, one thing gentleman, I want to ask you, there is a second violin and still more a third violin, it must always play with a little more weight, and a little more tone on the top part, that tone naturally is nearest the audience, but you can’t have too much second on thirds, you see what I mean? Everything play up, and the same with the violas, the first violas are always on top, you see? Out there, I’ve heard so many performances, so I’ve got a second viola, the ward’s got to play a little song on the first and the third’s, a little song on the second, you see? So, it’ll make the three-parts still, it doesn’t matter so much cellos, because cellos are not often playing in a harmony, you see? If you just think of that, it just does the trick, if you just think of it, second and third parts, they must get through on top of the other parts. Now, a very lively “G”, dig-a-dig-a-dig-a-dig, excellent. Pop “D”. Lightly, violas.

Video ends.

• And I’ve got another excerpt from a Prom Concert during the war, with the very popular English tenor, Heddle Nash, who was my grandmother’s absolute favourite singer, she would listen again, and again to Heddle Nash singing the serenade from “The Fair Maid Of Perth” and it’s a very English sound, it’s a very gentlemanly sound, he always sounds very public school to me, which apparently he wasn’t, he was an Essex boy with quite a Cockney accent, and he used to say, “I’m the best bloody messiah in this country!” New year’s singing handle. This is Elena Gerhardt, and she was regarded as the sort of high-priestess of the German lead, she’s one of two singers who really pioneered the idea of a concert of leader, 'cause the German art song were never written to be performed in public, they were written to be performed in private, this was a new development in the early 20th century. I think it’s quite interesting that the two singers who pioneered this new kind of performance were both Jewish, Elena Gerhardt and Julia Culp.

So, she was of a certain age that she was still singing, and she was recruited by Myra Hess for The National Gallery, but of course you know, for her, the German art song was a sacred thing and she couldn’t possibly envisage singing them in English translation, so she insisted on singing the original German, Myra Hess was very nervous about this, she didn’t know how an English audience, under reigned by German bombs every day were going to react to the sound of the German language, but in fact, they took it very well. I’m actually not going to play you one of her records, really 'cause I don’t like them, which is very unfair, instead I’m going to play you a Schubert song, sung in English by Isabel Bailey. So, there was no problem with the music of enemy nations, you know, Italian music, German music, Austrian music, continued to be very widely performed all the way through the Second World War, Beethoven No.1 as I said followed no problem with Wagner at all at the Proms during the Second World War, but the BBC and HMV would neither broadcast, nor record the languages of enemy nations, so everything had to be broadcast or performed in English. Here is Isabel Bailey, another quintessentially English singer, this is such an English sound, you know, if you didn’t know who she was and you heard it on the radio, you’d say it straight away, this can only be an English singer and she’s singing Schubert’s “An die Musik” “As to Music”. Of course, French was okay, 'cause normally the French were still on our side, even if Vichy France was effectively an ally of Nazi Germany, and we were very lucky in that we had probably the greatest specialist in French, Melodie in England at the time, that was Maggie Teyte, she was French-trained and her early career was entirely in Paris, she’d been chosen…

Her name was Teyte, T-A-T-E, but she quickly realised in France that if French people saw that, they’d call her “Maggie Tart”, and she didn’t want to be “Maggie Tart”, so she changed the name, so that they would pronounce it correctly. She was chosen by Debussy to be the second Mélisande, he loved her singing, there’s a letter that he wrote to his daughter saying, “I’ve been listening to a bird singing in the garden, and it sings almost as well at Mademoiselle Teyte.” So, she gave many, many concerts at The National Gallery Proms elsewhere of French Melodie, and I’m going to play you a song by Forêts with Dame Maggie Teyte. Now, Russian was another language that was of course allowed, I mentioned that there was no opera, no official opera in London, Covent Garden had been turned into a dance hall and Sadler’s Wells was used as a shelter for bombed-out people, but there were touring companies putting on operas and private ones, there was an impresario called Jay Pomeroy, who was actually Russian and he put on a Russian season that happened to be some very again, very, very distinguished artists, I mean, you could see Anatole Fistoulari the conductor and the sopranos, Oda Slobodskaya, Kyra Vayne, and Daria Bayan, and they did a hugely successful run of the opera…

Sorry, Sorotchintsi Fair by Modest Mussorgsky, I know quite a lot about this, 'cause at one time I was very friendly with Kyra Vayne, who alternated with Oda Slobodskaya, and she was ooh, my goodness, she was so vitriolic, she told hair-raising stories that went on with these performances, dreadful rivalries between the three sopranos, they all hated each other’s guts, Kyra at one point, she got her own back, and she doesn’t say which soprano it was, and I suspect it was Daria Bayan, but they shared a dressing room and she hid shrimps, and fish behind the radiator to stink out Daria Bayan. The other two, both Oda Slobodskaya and Kyra Vayne hated Daria Bayan, because she was sleeping with the boss, she was sleeping with Jay Pomeroy and she would turn up every day in very smart new clothes, which were resented at a time of restrictions on buying clothes. Anyway, I’m going to play you Oda Slobodskaya, very great Russian soprano, or originally of Jewish origin, who came out after the Russian revolution and she had most of her career in this country, and here is a piece from Sorotchintsi Fair.

And this is the soprano, Australian soprano, Joan Hammond, and she had just signed a contract with the Vienna State Opera, and she was also singing at La Scala Milan, in fact, she was singing in Milan when the war broke out and she came back to England, and she’s one of those people you could say that they, in a way, the war robbed her of the big international career that she should’ve had, but you could say instead of that, she built up a very warm and loving relationship with the British public, certainly the sound for people of my generation and a bit older maybe, it’s a very nostalgic sound, 'cause it’s a very distinctive tamber her voice in it, that when I hear it always makes me think of my childhood, Joan Hammond’s voice was around all the time, and she made a record, which was probably the best-selling operatic record of the Second World War, in Britain anyway. She’d been asked by Walter Legge at HMV, it was on a plum label, that’s a cheap label, to record Vissi d'arte, Love and Music from Tosca, and they thought, “Well, we’ve got to put something on the B-side, what should we put on the other side?” And she said, “Well, I want to sing, 'Oh, My Beloved Father’ from Gianni Schicchi.” And Walter Legge said, “Oh, no. Nobody knows that. I mean, that’s a very bad idea.” Oddly, I think it’d only been recorded once before, at the time of the operas first performance in 1918 with the original singer Florence Eastern, so it’s so popular now, and everybody sings it, and everybody’s familiar with it, but that really goes back to this record and as I said, Joan Hammond insisted, and she proved to be right, because it became a huge best-seller, I mean, this record was in every single middle-class household in England, in the 1940s and ‘50s.

And I want to finish with somebody who is a very special hero to me, this is Richard Tauber, who was Austrian, his father was a Jewish actor, his mother was Catholic, he was brought up as a Catholic and I doubt whether it ever even occurred to him that he was Jewish until the Nazis told him that he was, as he was… He’s a great classical singer, and it always annoys me when people are rather sort of sniffy about him, and they said, “Oh, well he sang operetta and he sang popular music.” They don’t take him seriously, they forget that he was the greatest Mozart tenor of his era, and he was also a marvellous interpreter of Schubert in particular, and the German lead. So, he was so loved in Germany, there are even songs written about him in the 1920s, and I think it never occurred to him that he would be rejected in Austrian Germany, so he went back to Germany after 1933 and was beaten up in the street, and that was you know, a terrible tragedy for him. So, he landed up in this country in the 1930s and he made movies that were very popular, and he married an English woman. I think when the war broke out, I think he was in South Africa, and again, he had lots of offers from America, he could’ve had a very safe war, and a prosperous one if he chose, but he chose to come back to Britain and according to his wife, the actress Diana Napier, there was not one single day of the Second World War where he didn’t sing somewhere in public, as you can see he sang at The Golders Green Hippodrome, so he wasn’t snobbish about where he would sing, he would sing anywhere and he went all around the country, and he’s just…

For me, he’s a genius, he brings such a special charm and character to everything he does. Now, I’ve chosen something, and I know it’s going to… One person I think is listening tonight, my great friend Sam Popper, she’s going to laugh at this, her father is Alfred Drake, who I played last week, singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”, who’s the you know the great, the great Broadway star and he sang in the premiers of all those great, all great musicals. So, this is Tauber, towards the end of the Second World War, picking up this song, “Oklahoma” hasn’t even been performed in Britain at this point, you could say you know, here is this great Mozart tenor, some would say he’s sort of slumming it by singing a Broadway musical song, but he brings very, very special qualities to it, this is not the Midwest, this is Mitteleuropa, and he is not walking through the cornfields, you have the sense that maybe he’s walking through the Prater in Vienna, after a night on the town, and what is… Because he has this heavy Austrian accent, and he brings a decidedly Viennese lilt, you certainly realise, “Oh, 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ is actually a waltz, it’s in ¾ time.”

Audio plays.

♪ There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow ♪ ♪ There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow ♪ ♪ The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye ♪ ♪ And it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky ♪ ♪ Oh what a beautiful morning ♪ ♪ Oh what a beautiful day ♪ ♪ I’ve got a beautiful feeling ♪ ♪ Everything’s going my way ♪ ♪ All the sounds of the earth are like music ♪ ♪ All the sounds of the earth are like music ♪ ♪ The breeze is so busy it don’t miss a tree ♪ ♪ And an old weeping willer is laughing at me ♪ ♪ Oh what a beautiful morning ♪ ♪ Oh what a beautiful day ♪ ♪ I’ve got a beautiful feeling ♪ ♪ Everything’s going my way ♪ ♪ Everything’s going my way ♪

Q&A and Comments:

So, that’s it, so let’s see if we have any questions.

“Just to say Myra Hess was my godmother, my name is Nadia Lasserson, and delighted to join this.” Well, I’m delighted that you did, every week, it is so extraordinary, Wendy has started something so amazing, every week, people turn up who have some connection with what we’re talking about.

“Myra Fuente, I was named after Myra Hess, my mother loved her.”

Yom HaShoah in half an hour, so we’ll have to cutout here, sorry Patrick.

Well, let me see. “I was taken to see her live in Toronto, my mother was hoping that I would get inspired to play, didn’t happen, but learned to love piano.” So, it’s just amazing that what she did really, and what she gave the world.

Q: What was the name of my aunty?

A: She was called Nell Crumbie when she was at the Royal Academy.

“My grandparents were friends with Myra Hess, grandfather was professor at Royal Academy of Music, my aunt asked her to be godmother to my cousin, Harold Craxton was her grandfather also at the RAM.”

“As a child…” This is Myra Schiff, “As a child, I disliked my name, wanted something more common like Susan or Judy, and my mother would always try to make me feel better by mentioning Myra Hess.” You must be very proud, please be proud to be called Myra after Myra Hess.

“I remember so clearly as very tiny child, my parents going to and talking about concerts given by Dame Myra Hess, in addition, my late husband told me how his parents took him to Tottenham Court Road Station to sleep on the platform, he had very vivid memories of it.”

This is from Margaret, “What you may not know, which my mother told me was that Myra Hess had mirrors put around her studio to help her stop moving so much when she played.” That’s very interesting, I mean, I feel that one of the qualities of her playing, rather like Dinu Lipatti is an incredible sense of stillness, I really get that for instance from the famous “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”.

This is from Vivian Lewis, “My mother in law, professionally known as Tessa Bloom, taught by Tobias Matthay, also known as Uncle Tobi, played many piano concerts in The National Gallery during the war. Jennifer, her daughter, is watching this in Boston.” For what was… Well, for what I’ve been talking about, that’s why she was made, she was… For her services to the nation, for The National Gallery concerts, that’s why she was made a dame.

“My father attended the Myra Hess concert at the Royal Albert Hall, on the 19th of June 1945, there she gave a post-war concert to raise money for charity, he was astonished at her musical virtuosity, he was even more astonished when he, a South African, a Canadian, and New Zealand was summoned to the Royal Box, there he was introduced to The Queen Mother and the two princesses.”

In the famous bit of film of Myra Hess at The National Gallery in “Listen to Britain”, you can actually see The Queen Mother, or The Queen as she was at the time, in the audience.

This I disagree with. From Elle Garbe, “Contrast her behaviour with the cowardice of Britain & peers.” No, I’m afraid you’re absolutely wrong about that, Britain & peers were in America at the beginning of the war, and with great courage, they came back to Britain, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, that was a very, very dangerous, courageous thing to do, to come back to Britain at that time in that way.

Somebody’s saying I’m wrong about London and music. London has for… Well, I didn’t say that I… I’m quoting Adolf Hitler saying that England was “Das Land ohne Musik”, please don’t think that’s my opinion, or I said that. Of course, it’s been a very important performance capital. Let me see.

The National Ensemble are performing in a series of concerts at the Wigmore Hall, starting in the autumn, recreating programmes of the Myra Hess series.“ That would be very interesting. "One of the concerts will be given at The National Gallery.” “That’s right.”

This is Nadia Lasserson, “My parents, responsible for the gallery concerts, if there is a minute at the end to tell the story, I have the complete programme here and my mother can be seen in all those pictures of the audience.” “The current midnight version on BBC has a rather…” You bet, yes that is a very ponderous version.

• Patrick. Patrick, do we have time? Do we have time to listen… I mean, do we have time to listen to Nadia?

• Yes, why not? Yeah? Good.

• Where is Nadia? Are you there? Judi, can you unmute her?

• [Judi] I’m here. Okay, let me just… I can, let me just have a… Is that Nadia Lasserson?

• Yes, thank you Patrick, that was an outstanding presentation. So, is Nadia there?

• [Judi] Nadia, if you can, I’ve sent you… You can unmute yourself, and speak, Nadia.

• [Nadia] Yes, can you hear me?

• [Judi] We can, yes.

• [Wendy] And thank you, Nadia.

• [Nadia] Well, thank you. First of all Patrick, it was absolutely wonderful. Can you see me? I can’t see myself on the screen, I can only see my-

• [Judi] No, I don’t see your… I don’t see a camera to unmute your-

• [Nadia] No, neither do I. Let’s try. Anyway, this story, because there’s not a lot of time, I can’t see a camera, can you? Can someone on… Can someone video me?

• [Judi] But there isn’t an option for me to undo your camera Nadia, I’m so sorry. It doesn’t give me that option.

• [Nadia] Okay, well not to worry. The story goes that my parents from Romania arrived from London on the 2nd of September 1939, and my mother was a pianist, and dear Myra Hess got her to Tobias Matthay for lessons, and anyway, her professor said, “Ooh, if you’re going to London on a little holiday, you must visit my friend, my dear friend, Myra Hess.” So, they phoned her up on the 2nd of September and she invited them for tea tomorrow, the 3rd of September, so they walked from West Cromwell Road to Hampstead Garden Suburb, and when they arrived at 3 o'clock, Chamberlain declared the war. So, they helped her black her windows, and she locked her two Steinway grand pianos, and cried, and said, “I will not unlock these pianos until the war is over.” And then, she gave them a nice English tea, and I imagine they were very hungry, and then, it was time to go back home, and walk back to wherever they were staying in Diggs, and my mother said, “How’s about you play us one tiny little piece on the piano before we go?” And she unlocked a piano, and played a Brahms Intermezzo, and my mother said, “This is what you should do during the war, because anybody can drive an ambulance.” And the next day, she went to see Kenneth Clark, and that was the history, and of course you all know that the first concert, she was worried nobody would come, and the queues went four blocks round the roads of The National Gallery. And Joyce Grenfell made the sandwiches, her great friend, and everyone was at these concerts, and my mother can be seen at the far left, second row, she went to nearly every concert, and I’ve got the book of programmes here in front of me, and a silver spoon with Myra’s writing which says, “Nadia Myra.” Whether all that is completely true, Peers Lane and Patricia when they do The National Gallery concerts scenario, they don’t mention this, but anyway, it’s a wonderful story if it’s true.

• Sounds very true to me. Thank you. Thank you, that’s the most interesting personal connection.

• Fabulous, thank you so for sharing that with us.

• [Nadia] Well, thank you for allowing it. Thank you.

• Sorry Patrick, I jumped. So, that was grand… I interrupted you. Oh no, thank you. Patrick, we’ve got another two or three minutes, do you want to continue with any of the questions, or are you ready to jump off?

• No, let me see. Somebody says, “I remember my German immigrant father the fact that no one Mahler during war.” Mahler just wasn’t you know, part of the standard repertoire really, internationally at that time.

Q: “Do you know when the first concert was, post 1945 when Mahler was finally given an airing?”

A: I don’t know precisely, but Mahler didn’t really take off in this country ‘til the 1960s.

Somebody says… This is Carolyn, she’s saying, “I was at Dartington Summer School of music, I went to a masterclass given by Dame Maggie Teyte, she sang a few notes and phrases for the students, and I will never forget that amazing voice.” That is true. There is a recording of her, I mean, long past her performing days, I think it was on a BBC programme, and she kept that very individual tamber to the end, and also the voice was completely steady.

“Guess the rivalries are where the prima donnas come from.” I’m not sure I understand that.

“I recall my parents saying Myra Hess was playing in Leeds Town Hall, no doubt Allen Bennet was there, even though a little boy, who knows?”

Somebody loved the Slobodskaya, “It’s the most individual, wonderful sound.”

Please tell that the Italians changed sides. That when the Italians changed sides, they continue…“ I don’t know actually, I doubt whether actually they allowed any Italian to be sung until the end of the war, even after the Italians changed sides. I’d be surprised, sadly.

Somebody’s saying… Yeah, do explore Oda Slobodskaya, she has a really wonderful sing… Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joan Hammond, I don’t think it was hockey, it was golf, Joan Hammond was a golf champion, I’m going to talk more about her, 'cause she made a very… She had huge shoulders, you know? She had champion golfer’s shoulders, so she made a rather unlikely Madame Butterfly, and I’m going to talk about that in a week or so.

"My husband was going to be called "Richard”, but his surname is “Tauber”, so his father thought he shouldn’t call him “Richard”, because of the famous opera singer. Well, I would be honoured to be named after him, yeah.

“Don’t be sniffy about Golders Green Hippodrome.” Somebody’s telling me, “It’s a beautiful building.” Well, I used to go past it all the time, of course on the way to London Jewish Cultural Centre, and I know lots of the good things were done there, but I don’t think anybody would claim it was one of the most glamorous venues in the world for a world-class singer.

“I don’t think I can…” Myra Hess, go on YouTube, you’ll find all sorts of things of Myra Hess. And I think, is that about it?

Q: “Is the Hippodrome still there?”

A: I don’t know if it’s still used, the building is still there.

All right. I think I’m through. Thank you for all your very… Was she related to Nigel Lawson? I didn’t know that. Right, I think that is probably it. And I think that’s it, yeah.

• Well, thanks Patrick. That was a fabulous presentation. It was great. Thank you. Yeah, thanks everybody for caring, all their comments. See you soon.

• [Patrick] Right, bye-bye.

• I just want to remind everybody as well that we’re having our celebration on the 18th… On the 11th. Sorry, I’m getting it confused with my son’s birthday party. Sorry, on the 11th. I’m sorry, this is my son’s 30th. So, Lockdown University’s on the 11th and just to remind all of you who are still there. So, that’s it. Sorry about that, the 18th is David’s 30th birthday. Thank you. All right everyone, bye-bye.

• [Judi] Thanks, bye-bye.

• [Wendy] Bye.