Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Stephan Bergman, Claude Debussy :: Eileen Joyce (Testament)

Lightish selection, superbly played

12/10/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In some ways, I wish the choice of selection were more varied (on top of it, several selections of this CD overlap with the Pearl reissue). Eileen Joyce recorded many discs during the 1930s and 40s, including some larger Chopin works, as well as Brahms pieces. Just by looking at the context, one will likely to get an impression that Joyce was a supremely talented drawing room player. Which of course she isn't. Joyce was a superb pianist, with technique and musicianship that rival among the finest pianists. Her glittering passagework is evident everywhere, but so as poetic sensitivity. Hopefully there will be another reissue of Joyce coming up soon that does not overlap with the selection here (or the Pearl reissue). Joyce's recordings certainly deserves more attention than they have been getting up to now. In the meantime, this CD will do."

A bief encounter with Eileen Joyce.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 06/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Internet reviewers, so far, principally associate Australian pianist Eileen Joyce with the soundtrack of the Noel Coward/David Lean film "Brief Encounter". This fellow Australian, who heard her in performance and whose piano teacher knew her, welcomes this excellent CD which provides a first-rate memento of her work as a much recorded pianist of the 1930s. Hardly a month went by between 1933 and the outbreak of World War Two without Eileen Joyce, still in her twenties, completing full and varied recording schedules. Her repertoire, as reflected in this CD, was extensive. If the so-called "salon items" were the best sellers, that was because she presented them tastefully. True, she was sometimes guilty of tasteless additions, as when she provides a bass note at the end of the Bach Prelude and Fugue (Track 1) that was an octave below the one Bach wrote, but she was not the only pianist of her time to take such liberties. In their day, released on the Parlophone label, her records provided some of the best piano sound to be heard, and they still sound astonishingly realistic. Artistically, Eileen Joyce didn't scale the heights, nor did she probe the depths, but she could open pleasant sound vistas that could provide wonderful listening experiences. I welcome this CD as very good value indeed, even if only because it is one that I shall want to play and replay many times."