Helen Marquard - The Musical Life: Hedwig Stein: Emigrée Pianist

Copyright 2020 Helen Marquard

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To

Anna,

whose unstinting help, encouragement and friendship made this possible;

for

Brian,

who knows why;

and

with my profound thanks to the many people who have been so generous in sharing memories, places, information, and ideas with me along the way and who I hope will enjoy reading the composite story.

Hedwig Stein programme Wigmore Hall 1956

Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank; all we have to do is to look and to listen and to listen and to look and soon the little figures for they are rather under life-size will begin to move and to speak, and as they move we shall arrange them in all sorts of patterns of which they were ignorant, for they thought when they were alive that they could go where they liked; and as they speak we shall read into their sayings all kinds of meanings which never struck them for they believed when they were alive that they said straight off whatever came into their heads. But once you are in a biography, all is different.

Virginia Woolf, The Art of Biography

Dearest Anna

This letter, with its considerable appendix, is surely going to be the longest letter anyone has ever written to you. At its heart is one of the people most close to you: your mother, Hedwig. What more can I possibly tell you about your own mother, you must surely ask especially when you know that the bulk of the material I have drawn on is what you have provided me with: diaries, letters, photographs, concert programmes, your recollections. But I couldnt countenance simply compiling and editing those, and leaving it at that. No, what Id like to share with you, and others, are my impressions of Hedwig and her life, my story of how I came to write her story, and her account of the events that impinged or crashed on her, together with the characters who played various roles and were influential in her thinking or her actions. Music took centre stage in her life; what she read, the art she saw, and the countrysides she loved of course added to that. I wanted to explore, as far as I could, how this deeply colourful woman changed through her life, as a pianist, as a teacher, as a wife, and as a mother, and how she affected others.

Of the many people I have met in my life, Hedwig stands out. Her sparkle for life, her ideas and her passion for music, all of which she was so ready to share with others, were irresistible. Time spent with her was as exhilarating as being on the top of a mountain, the wind blowing through your hair, while you share your feelings with the good friend at your side. Add to that the currents that flowed through her life, the kindnesses of strangers in helping her as an migre, and people she or her family and friends associated with, a few of whom I had already heard of when I first met her: Albert Einstein, Brahms, Max Reger, Peter Maxwell Davies, Jacob Epstein, Albert Schweitzer, Margaret Mead, JB Priestley. The mix was as powerful as the strongest of cocktails.

Attempting to tell the story of anyones life is daunting. Maybe the clue is in the word story rather than biography. It implies a fusion of the writers imagination and experience with the facts about anothers life, the aim being to portray that person and what it was about her that was distinctive. Even when there are resources to hand, the gaps are inevitably larger than the material available; interpretation of diaries, letters and accounts will at the very least be tinged with, or even drastically coloured by, the storytellers own perceptions and experience.

Thinking back to my early teenage years, I remember finding out about the local library, and there making the discovery that there were books about people. The kind librarian told me they were biographies. These were not the fairytales or made-up stories Id read when I was smaller, but much thicker, proper books, some about people I had come across, others about people completely unknown to me. Physically they were contained within the binding of the books. And yet, as I sampled some of those on offer, I started to form clear impressions of their subjects until at the end, I felt as though I had been a companion through their lives. The sense of knowing the people personally, almost of owning them, persisted, even today. The individuals became, in some strange way, part of my circle of associates. Some I liked, others I did not; some I even felt I could identify with, to a greater or lesser extent. Some led me to examine my own life and preoccupations and positions, opening new doors and maybe closing existing ones. Of those, a few triggered quite radical changes in me, or in my plans for and attitude to my life, in particular Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, Yehudi Menuhin, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and Bertrand Russell. It was almost as good as meeting the people first-hand. The power of people and their stories

Hedwig Stein, or even the wife Hedwig Elinson, is not a name that trips off anyones lips, other than those of her immediate family. Even within her profession, she is little known. She died in 1983, and were I not embarking on relating her story, her immediate fate would be as most peoples: talked about occasionally by her surviving daughter and grandchildren, and possibly by some of the people she taught, and then becoming lost from everyones consciousness. Yet she is someone whose life is worth remembering and reflecting on in part because of who she was and what she did, and in part because of what she lived through, experienced, and passed on. I wanted to find a place for her today, to rediscover the person who had played a role in many others lives, who thought deeply about what she had experienced and shared it, and who was able to convey much colour and emotion through music.

As I got going, I thought about other biographies; of, say, philosophers. There one might work through the evolution of their thoughts through their writings. For painters and sculptors, one can trace changes in technique or approach. Novelists adapt their styles. And in each of these cases, their work would have been influenced by events that happened to them, not only by their internal reflections. Much the same is true for those outside the arts. Scientists work through ideas, experimentation, and postulates, and develop theories; politicians are necessarily shaped by events and are seen in the light of how they deal with them. All these can be captured in concrete ways; the impacts are often traceable. But musicians, especially performing musicians? Music is ephemeral. It exists only from one millisecond to another as individual notes are played. After that it is confined to memories, unless a performance is recorded and in Hedwigs day, that was relatively uncommon. The broadcasts she made no longer exist. We have nothing other than what critics wrote at the time and the impressions of the very few people who are still alive, to the extent that they can remember and describe how she played. No wonder the name Hedwig Stein draws a complete blank today.