The concerts today

To celebrate the success of Myra Hess's wartime concerts, the National Gallery puts on modern-day concerts, featuring Hess's pupils.

The concerts today

When the wartime concerts finished in 1946, Myra Hess expressed her wish that music would one day return to the National Gallery.

In recent years it has done so, and – to the delight of those who remember the original story – it has returned in her name.

In 2006 the National Gallery and Jewish Culture UK marked three and a half centuries of British Jewish Life by staging a special tribute to Myra Hess.

A day of recitals was held in the Barry Rooms, the galleries where the original events were held. It was a great success and resulted in the founding of an annual Myra Hess Day to celebrate all that the wartime concerts embodied and achieved.

The recitals are of the highest standard, and yet – in keeping with the very special legacy which they commemorate – always a family affair. Friends and relatives of Myra Hess attend, along with members of the wartime audience, and a new generation of fans.

A number of Myra Hess’s pupils – now distinguished pianists themselves – have appeared, including Stephen Kovacevich, the Contiguglia brothers, Richard and John, and the late Yonty Solomon, who in turn taught the celebrated international pianist, Piers Lane, Myra Hess’s ‘grandpupil’ and the artistic director of the events.

Highlights over the years include a performance of Schumann’s Carnaval: Scènes Mignonnes sur Quatre Notes (Little Scenes on Four Notes). It was part of the programme in 2006 and featured no fewer than nine pianists.

Another performance of note was the premiere in 2008 of a specially commissioned work by Nigel Hess, Myra Hess’s great nephew. Hess based his piece on a theme closely associated with his great aunt - Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.

And in 2009, the award-winning British actress Patricia Routledge (star of Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates) appeared in Admission One Shilling, a monologue telling the story of the wartime concerts in Myra Hess’s own insightful, impassioned, and often very funny words.

The Contiguglia brothers

The annual Dame Myra Hess Day, which celebrates the regular concerts organised by Myra Hess during the Second World War, has been generously supported since its inception in 2006 by The Ernest Hecht Charitable Foundation.