My first public performance of a Beethoven sonata, the C minor, was with Myra Hess at a joint recital in Dundee, Scotland, when I was already in my middle ’teens. I was still groping my way in the (to me) new realm of Beethoven’s language, whereas Myra Hess, though barely out of Tobias Matthay’s school, moved in this world with the assurance and the stylistic conviction of a veteran. / The word “veteran” may seem somewhat of an exaggeration in connection with the Myra Hess whom I had first heard at a pupils’ concert at this school a year or two previous to our joint recital. But, although she was not yet sufficiently grown-up for a formal hair-do at that school concert, her playing already had a mellowness, an intimate graciousness (I am tempted to call it a “sweet reasonableness”), which I have never since encountered in any young virtuoso, unless it may have been in the eleven- or twelve-year-old Heifetz’s touchingly beautiful performance of the Brunch G minor Concerto in Berlin, some years before Word War I. / But in one thing Myra Hess stood alone: her playing seemed never to have gone through those unfortunate phases that mark (and mar) the development of most other virtuosi. Eloquence born of understatement, a rare gift indeed – and, I suspect, a particularly British one – was hers even in that youthful time. And I can well imagine Myra Hess, Dame of the British Empire, in those recent war days, brushing aside the homage and gratitude due her for the incalculable good she wrought during the London “blitz” deprecating smile she used to have for us in those early days when we pointed out something particularly admirable and lovable in her playing of, say, the first statement of the theme of Beethoven’s G Major Concerto. To many of us, the almost unique quality of her playing was her selfless humility in the presence of great music- her air of asking us: “Am I not privileged to be able to bring this to you?”- Never: “Am I not a wonderful pianist?” << less