Literary, Views And Reviews A PERFORMER’S CROWDED LIFE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31984, 10 May 1969, Page 4

Literary, Views And Reviews A PERFORMER’S CROWDED LIFE

A Bundle Of Time. The Memoirs of Harriet Cohen. Faber and Faber. Illustrated. Index. 330 PPHarriet Cohen’s amazingly crowded life leaves one breathless. How did she fit it all in? And how much, as a matter of fact, did she accept the. success that came? One day she is a-little girl playing at. composing with her father: the next, she becomes the youngest student ever to win the Ada Lewis Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music: the next, she is taken to play to Anna Pavlova; the next, she plays Byrd and Orlando Gibbons to Sir Edward Elgar (which he did not like); and Elgar, throughout her life, despite formidable opposition, retained his position as the greatest person of her While stiU a very young student, her-captivating personality, great hearty, gift for friendship, and (most of all) her power to interpret Bach and the early English composers,, who had been neglected, and the music of her contemporaries as well, had set her on the path she was to follow all her life. Harriet Cohen takes this phenomenon for granted. She was only 15 when pointed out to Arnold Bax (whose reputation as a composer then was probably as great as Britten’s now) as being the ideal person to perform his piano pieces. He. wrote one for her, “The Maiden with the Daffodil,” and helped Frederick Corder to choose a pen-name for her as a composer: Tania. She remained Tania to family and friends from that time. “From then on Bax gave me all his new piano works to , perform; these included four j major works with orchestra, ; three sonatas and much , chamber music.” This pat- , tern was repeated with Wil- ( liam Walton, Peter Fricker, . Gustav Holst and a host of ( lesser British composers, to , say nothing of Satie, de ■ Falla, Sibelius and Bartok.

Apart from giving the defi- ; nitive first performances of . works by composers who were i especially sympathetic to her, Harriet Cohen became in, creasingly known as a player of Bach; she played at the, fin* at Sir Henry Wood’s allBach programmes in his Saturday afternoon symphony ; concerts. She was happiest playing -Bach, early seven- ' tenth century music, and the works of her friends (who also included Prokovieff, Stravinsky, Milhaud, Richard Strauss and Shostakovitch). How is one to account for her social as well a* pianistic virtuosity? Harriet Cohen does not attempt to do this, and indeed her book is so crowded with people and events that she has no space to consider causes, only

were of Lithuanian origin; her grandfather taught her a little Russian which she could still remember years later : when touring Russia. The i Cohen family were musical; an uncle composed, and so did her father, one of whose works for military band was performed by the 8.8. C. Her mother was an accomplished musician from a Norfolk family with political connections, and the pianist Irene Scharrer was a cousin. From the age of four, Harriet was taken to every production of Diaghileff’s Russian ballet From these congenial early surroundings she seems to have very quickly extended her scope beyond her family to become an eager part of a cosmopolitan world of composers and musicians. We are not told much of the artistic struggle in Miss Cohen’s life. Of course she must have practised for hours on end, but this aspect of her world is kept from us, and we taste only her successes. Can the path to fame have been as easy as it seems here? The high points of Harriet

Cohen’s life, personally speaking, were her friendships with famous older men. In this book are reproduced many valuable letters from Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett, Edward Elgar and Ramsay MacDonald. In her large Hampstead studio-house, Miss Cohen created an atmosphere where the great writen, politicians and artists of her acquaintance were made welcome and able to relax ■midst music, admiration, and the good cooking of her housekeeper. Her friendship with Shaw was particularly treasured. She played Bach for him to sing ‘The Apple Cart” to—because of the long sentences! And a postscript to the book is a very long letter from Shaw, in which he outlines a lecture to be given by a pianist. “A piano lecture, not merely a recital," was his idea. But no-one has notably attempted what he had in mind; not, .at least, in a public concert Harriet Cohen suffered very great misfortunes in her life, but she does not allow them to cloud the exuberance of her reminiscences. She suffered from tuberculosis, and for some time her life was in danger; her beloved studio, with her collection of music manuscripts and books and letters, was utterly destroyed by bombing; an acci-

dent to her hand nearly put an end to her playing, and, Rebecca West tells us, at the end of her life suffered from falling sight and from some maliciousness amongst acquaintances. Harriet Cohen died in 1967, but her memoirs do not dwell on years beyond 1948, except to include some notable event —such as an afternoon spent with Sibelius when he was 92. This holds its interest for us; as does, after her meeting Dr Chaim Welzmann in 1942, her ardent Zionism. She holds our attention less readily with more gossipy information, such as the hospitality of Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt or Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians. Nevertheless, one can only admire the scope and fruitfulness of Miss Cohen’s contacts. Whether one’s interest is in D. H. Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence, Eamon de Valera, Picasso or Eleanor Farjeen, Harriet Cohen can provide a tit-bit But only occasionally does one feel her musical sensibility—to which so many of her trends pay tribute in letters reproduced here. Her earlier book, “Music’s Handmaid," will fill this gap. Surely no performer can have been a greater champion of contemporary music, or have derived greater enjoyment from the arduous performer’s life.