Dame Myra Hess biography: The composer, two pianists and his wife

By Norman Lebrecht

Jessica Duchen’s forthcoming Biography of Myra Hess gets all steamed up when it comes to the young pianist’s love for the rising composer Arnold Bax. There were a couple of impediments. Bax had a wife and two babies at home, and he was having a raging affair with another London pianist, Harriet Cohen, a close friend of Myra’s.

This could only end in tears.

Here are two extracts:

The rift between Myra and Harriet ran deep and did much damage.
Myra’s exacting standards for herself and her associates made her speak
out, as usual, when she felt she could make a difference. She could be
blunt, however, and her targets did not always take it in good spirit. Irene
experienced this when she decided to marry rather than be single-minded
about her career. Myra, who was generous-spirited and had plenty of
charm when she wished to, maybe did not even realise the effect her
words could have. Unused to forthright expression amid a culture known
for its double-speak and euphemisms, those on the receiving end might
feel intimidated, attacked and sometimes hurt beyond repair, especially if
they looked up to her – as most people did.

But Harriet was the only one with whom the antagonism seemed
mutual. Unlike her, Myra did not readily admit to jealousy; but as the
years passed, she and her friends missed no opportunity to get in a dig,
denigration or barbed joke at Harriet’s expense. Nobody else she knew
was targeted in such terms so consistently, or for so long…

*
Harriet tended to believe that everybody loved her. Many did.
Perhaps she intended to be a free spirit. Some of her friends, like the
adoring Rebecca West, were magnetised by her cultural interests –
she collected art, travelled widely, loved literature and held celebrity
studded bohemian parties – besides her beauty, vulnerability and
expertise in winning sympathy. But others considered her little better
than a tart; and for struggling musicians, nothing is worse than a rival
artist whom they suspect is being given concert engagements for the
wrong reasons.

Harriet’s letters to Bax were full of narcissistic extremes. Twice that
year she mentions thoughts of suicide, whether by swimming out to sea
– when the Bechstein arrived at Mabel’s cottage for Myra and Harriet was
not allowed to touch it – or by throwing herself under a tube train. It was
safe for Bax to assume that she would not.

*

Myra would come into her own as the pianist who played National Gallery concerts through the Blitz. Harriet is all but forgotten.

First published at Slipped Disc, February 2, 2025