EILEEN JOYCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 96, 24 April 1941, Page 4

EILEEN JOYCE

Sir.-May I have a few lines of your space to reply to the recent strange letter of L. D. Austin about Eileen Joyce. In the Radio Times (London) dated March 20, 1936, Tobias Matthay wrote in the following modest terms about the "few lessons" he gave Eileen Joyce. "May I call your attention to a little oversight in Mr. Guy Fletcher’s excellent article on Eileen Joyce in your issue of*February 28? He said she had ‘a few lessons’ from me before her first Prom appearance in 1930; but omitted to state that she had some three years’ intensive study with me after that. She won the Woodward Smith Scholarship in 1931, and often appeared at our students’ concerts, and made such astonishing progress (both technically and musically) that at the last of these concerts at Wigmore Hall in 1933 she brought the house down with the same two studies of Liszt and Slotzer which also made her name as a gramophonist." In The Gramophone for April, 1935, in an article on Eileen Joyce, W. S. Meadmore tells us that her teacher Jeichmuller kept her doing nothing but finger technique for nine months, at the end of which time her money had run out. Not long after this she went to London. Then began ;the three years intensive study with Tobias Matthay, the "finishing teacher" of some of our most brilliant pianists like Harriet Cohen, Myra Hess, Irene Scharrer, York Bowen, Gertrude Peppercorn and Sir Arnold Bax, together with many others. Mr. Austin claims that Eileen Joyce had a few lessons with Mr. Matthay, but how he can reconcile "a few lessons" with "three years’ intensive study" is by no means clear. Then, finally, Mr. Austin tells us that Eileen Joyce is the greatest female pianist since Carreno. That is purely a matter of opinion-Mr, Austin’s opinion. It’s the sort of claim made by the publicity agent of every artist, and has about as

much value, being entirely misleading.-

FACTS

FIRST

(Wellington).