Harriet Cohen

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Harriet Cohen (December 2, 1895 – November 13, 1967) was a British pianist.

She was born in London and studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music under Tobias Matthay, having won the Ada Lewis scholarship at the age of 12. She made her debut at a Chappell's Sunday concert at the Queen's Hall a year later. Her first major appearance was in 1920 when she appeared at the Wigmore Hall in a joint recital with the tenor John Coates.

She became particularly associated with contemporary British music, giving the world premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Piano Concerto (which was written for her) and recording Edward Elgar's Piano Quintet with the Stratton String Quartet under the composer's supervision. A number of composers wrote music specifically for her, including John Ireland, Bela Bartok, Ernest Bloch and E. J. Moeran, and particularly Sir Arnold Bax (Cohen's lover) who wrote most of his piano pieces for her. This includes the music for David Lean's 1948 film version of Oliver Twist. He also composed Concertino for Left Hand for her after she lost the use of her right hand in 1948.

The last six pieces in the collection Mikrokosmos (known as Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythms), by Béla Bartók, are dedicated to her.

Harriet Cohen dedicated an important effort to the performance of the Tudor composers at a time when this was unusual, and gave recitals of works by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons and also of Henry Purcell. She was considered one of the finest performers of J. S. Bach's keyboard music, winning outstanding praise from the musicologist Alfred Einstein. Pau Casals, also, invited her to play Bach with his orchestra at Barcelona, and Wilhelm Furtwängler extended a similar invitation on hearing her in Switzerland. She gave the first 'all-Bach' recital at the Queen's Hall in 1925.

She also cultivated Spanish music, and gave the second performance of de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain, a work which became especially associated with her. She was also an early exponent of music of the Soviet Union in Britain, and visited Russia in 1935 to broadcast from Moscow and Leningrad, including works by Shostakovich, Kabalevsky and Polovinkin. These composers later sent her further compositions.

She was Vice-President of the Women's Freedom League, and was for several years associated with the Jewish National Fund and the Palestine Conservatoire of Music at Jerusalem. Cohen was made a CBE in 1938. She died in London. The Harriet Cohen International Music Award was introduced in her honour in 1951.

In January 2006, Dearest Tania, a words-and-music programme telling the story of Cohen, premiered, written by Duncan Honeybourne and performed with actress Louisa Clein.[1]

[edit] Further reading

  • Cohen, Harriet A Bundle of Time (1969)
  • Brook, Donald, Masters of the Keyboard (Rockliff, London 1955 printing), 151-152.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mercia musicians (badly designed page but the information is there if you look hard enough)

[edit] External links


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