A Home, Husband, Bach Fugues And Babies

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 7, 28 August 1936, Page 17

A Home, Husband, Bach Fugues And Babies

Eileen Joyce, London’s Laurels Upon Her, Has Simple Ideas: Wouldn’t Be A Platinum Blonde

(A Special Interview With the "Radio Record").

66 OMEWHERE in England, or maybe Mel-bourne-lI’d like a home where I could have a husband and babies, and do some’ cooking and play Bach fugues. I adore playing Bach." "There wouldn’t be much time for Bach fugues when you’d got through with the cooking and the hus‘band and the babies." A sigh. "No, I suppose there. wouldn’t. Besides, my ideas are a bit Victorian. Men don’t seem to want to get married and have babies to-day. You, for instance-do vou want babies?"

I eonfessed that there WERE things I wanted more. Eileen Joyce, I had to keep telling myself during the talk, was a really famous pianist who’d had columns in the English papers, more columns in the Australian ones, and who was now spending August in New Zealand instead of accepting that coveted invitation to play a Beethoven concerto at the Queen’s Hall, London, this month. I’d prepared all sorts of important questions-Who were the big figures in London music to-day? Had broadcasting at Home raised the standard of musical appreciation? Instead, I found myself telling her what made gin slings go pink. ("It’s supposed to be cherry brandy, but I think it’s only raspberry," I said, idiotically.) And then we talked about Marlene Dietrich’s eyebrows-whether they were shaved right off and just painted in that queer way, or whether an amusing Providence had really presented her with them. I tried to pull the interview back on the rails. "Do you think there is greater appreciation of music in Australia to-day than when you left eight years ago?" "Heavens! I’ve not the faintest idea," laughed Eileen Joyce. "You see, I left Australia when I was 14, and a 14-year-old girl’s ideas on good music or bad aren’t exactly profound. "We lived at Boulder City, and it was the eeriest sensation in the world when I walked facross the floor again and looked at the old ~piano-my father had bought it for a pound from a drinking saloon. I struck a chord on it and the past came flying back-the kid with | pigtails and -brown legs; washing dishes; practising long hours on the dear, funny, old piano; .the blinding sunlight and corrugated-iron of a typical Australian township." Then several fairy godfathers stepped into Hileen Joyce’s life. A passing priest heard her playing on the old piano, and arranged for her to. be sent to Loretta Convent in Perth. . : Perey Gr ainger and Wilhelm Backhaus heard her play. .. -Grainger said, "Send her to America." . . . Backhaus said Leipzig. She went to Leipzig, ‘But the little Saxony city, with its glistening towers and twisty streets, left the little

girl with a Jump in her throat and a dull sort of pain in her heart-a heart that cried out fiercely for a glimpse of the hazy blue distances of Australia, for the scent of the gum leaves and the acrid smoke of ‘distant bush fire, for. the skin-pricking heat of the gaudy Australian sunshine. HHomesickness had reduced Eileen Joyce to just an ordinary little girl. _It was two New Zealanders who brought the little garden of genius into blossom again. They took BHileen Joyce off to London, where she was introduced to Albert Coates. Luckily, she had a (Continued on page 58.)

Eileen Joyce’s Tastes (Continued from page 17.)

| Russian concerto in her repertoire, a concerto that appealed to the Russian half of Coates’s make-up. London! Bileen Joyce’s eyes sparkled as brightly as the wintry afternoon sunshine outside the window. "I love the place!-the bustle, the crowds! You feel you’re THERE. ‘And the concerts-two and three a night! Such a feast of music! And the theatres with plays written by the really famous! "Tt’s made me sad to see how quiet the theatre is in Australia. Fancy Sydney-the second (or is it the third?) largest city in the Empirewith only one legitimate theatre, I suppose it’s the cinema that’s done it. ‘It’s a great drug, the cinema, You pay your money, you loll back in a com: fortable seat, you don’t have to think -or even stay awake if you don’t want to!" "There’s been some talk about the clothes you wear on the concert plat-form-lavender, old lace and all that sort of thing," I said. "Lady Duff Gordon’s idea. I wanted to be very modern-scarlet toenails, slinky satin-you know. But Lady Duff Gordon-a sister of Elinor Glyn, by the way-thought I was an old-world type, so into brocades and laces did I go. I think the choice was a wise one. Lady Gordon thought she’d like to turn me into a platinum blonde once; thought it would look pretty good against a black piano. But I said no,"