Dame Fanny Waterman (22 March 192020 December 2020) was a British pianist and academic piano teacher, who is particularly known as the founder, chair and artistic director of the
Leeds International Piano Competition
The Leeds International Piano Competition, informally known as The Leeds and formerly the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, takes place every three years in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1961 by Marion, Countess ...
. She was also president of the
Harrogate International Music Festival.
Early life, education and career as pianist
Waterman was born in Leeds to Mary (née Behrmann) and Myer Waterman (né Wasserman), a Russian Jew who had emigrated to England to work as a jeweller.
She attended
Allerton High School
Allerton High School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in Alwoodley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is situated around 500 metres north of the A6120 Leeds Outer Ring Road, north of the Moor Allerton shopping centre ...
and began to study with
Tobias Matthay
Tobias Augustus Matthay (19 February 185815 December 1945) was an English pianist, teacher, and composer.
Biography
Matthay was born in Clapham, Surrey, in 1858 to parents who had come from northern Germany and eventually became naturalised Brit ...
.
She won a scholarship to the
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...
where she studied with
Cyril Smith
Sir Cyril Richard Smith (28 June 1928 – 3 September 2010) was a prominent British politician who after his death was revealed to have been a prolific serial sex offender against children. A member of the Liberal Party, he was Member of ...
.
She started giving public performances, and in 1941 opened the concert season in
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
with the Leeds Symphony Society.
The following year, she appeared at
The Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
as one of the soloists playing the Bach
Concerto for three harpsichords in C major (BWV 1064), conducted by Sir
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London ...
, but her concert career was disrupted by the Second World War.
She played duos with the violinist
Erich Gruenberg
Erich Gruenberg (12 October 19247 August 2020) was an Austrian-born British violinist and teacher. Following studies in Israel, he was a principal violinist of major orchestras, including the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the London ...
.
Leeds International Piano Competition
By the early 1960s, Waterman felt that young British pianists needed a goal to give them a competitive edge over overseas pianists. In 1961, jointly with her pianist friend
Marion, Countess of Harewood (later Marion Thorpe), and Roslyn Lyons, she founded the
Leeds International Piano Competition
The Leeds International Piano Competition, informally known as The Leeds and formerly the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, takes place every three years in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1961 by Marion, Countess ...
. She was artistic director of the competition and, from 1981, chair of the competition jury, holding the posts until 2015.
Finalists of the competition who began an international career based on it include
Radu Lupu
Radu Lupu (30 November 1945 – 17 April 2022) was a Romanian pianist. He was widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of his time.
Born in Galați, Romania, Lupu began studying piano at the age of six. Two of his major piano teach ...
,
Murray Perahia
Murray David Perahia () (born April 19, 1947) is an American pianist and conductor. He is widely considered one of the greatest living pianists. He was the first North American pianist to win the Leeds International Piano Competition, in 1972. Kno ...
,
Sunwook Kim,
Federico Colli,
Eric Lu,
András Schiff
Sir András Schiff (; born 21 December 1953) is a Hungarian-born British classical pianist and conductor, who has received numerous major awards and honours, including the Grammy Award, Gramophone Award, Mozart Medal, and Royal Academy of Musi ...
,
Mitsuko Uchida
is a classical pianist and conductor, born in Japan and naturalised in Britain, particularly noted for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert.
She has appeared with many notable orchestras, recorded a wide repertory with several labels, w ...
,
Lars Vogt
Lars Vogt (8 September 1970 – 5 September 2022) was a German classical pianist, conductor and academic teacher. Noted by ''The New York Times'' for his interpretations of Brahms, Vogt performed as a soloist with major orchestras, including the ...
and
Denis Kozhukhin
Denis Kozhukhin (born in Nizhny Novgorod, 1986) is a Russian pianist who was awarded third prize in the 2006 Leeds International Piano Competition. He was also awarded first prize in the 2010 Belgian Queen Elisabeth Competition for piano.
Record ...
.
She was a jury member for other international piano competitions, including the
Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
,
Chopin, the
Horowitz
Horowitz ( he, הוֹרוֹביץ, yi, האָראָװיץ) is a Levitical Ashkenazi surname deriving from the Horowitz family, though it can also be a non Jewish surname as well. The name is derived from the town of Hořovice, Bohemia. Other varia ...
and the
Paloma O'Shea International Piano Competition
The Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition (in Spanish: Concurso Internacional de Piano de Santander "Paloma O'Shea") is a piano competition taking place in Santander, Spain. Founded in 1972 by Paloma O'Shea as a national prize, i ...
.
Teaching, writing and societies
Waterman's notable students include
Paul Crossley,
Jonathan Dunsby
Jonathan Mark Dunsby (born 16 March 1953) is a British classical pianist, musicologist, author and translator, particularly known for his research in musical analysis. His introductory textbook, ''Music Analysis in Theory and Practice'' (1988), co ...
,
Benjamin Frith
Benjamin Frith is a British classical pianist. He was born in South Yorkshire, England, on 11 October 1957. He began taking piano lessons with Fanny Waterman at age ten. He was encouraged by Waterman to pursue a career after winning the Dudley N ...
,
Michael Roll and Allan Schiller; Roll won the inaugural Leeds competition and her students were also successful in other international competitions.
She held strong views on piano pedagogy in the UK, blaming electronic keyboards, interruptive mobile phones and insufficient discipline for what she perceived as the country's weakness in generating top-class performers.
She published a number of piano instruction books. This included the 30-volume ''Me and My Piano'' series, which was co-authored with Thorpe, and sold more than 2 million copies worldwide.
She co-wrote ''Piano Competition: The Story of the Leeds'' with Wendy Thompson (1990). Her autobiography, ''My Life in Music'', was published in 2015.
She was Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Piano Performance at
Leeds College of Music until 2006,
and a patron of
The Purcell School for Young Musicians
The Purcell School for Young Musicians is a specialist music school for children, located in the town of Bushey, south Hertfordshire, England, and is the oldest specialist music school in the UK. The school was awarded the UNESCO Mozart Medal i ...
.
She served as honorary vice-president of the British
Society of Women Musicians The Society of Women Musicians was a British group founded in 1911 for mutual cooperation between women composers and performers, in response to the limited professional opportunities for women musicians at the time. The founders included Katharine ...
and honorary president of the
Harrogate International Festivals
Harrogate International Festivals (HIF) is a registered charity and one of the UK's longest running arts festivals, having been established in 1966. Based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Festivals include the Harrogate Music Festival, Theakston Ol ...
from 2009.
Personal life
In 1944, she married Geoffrey de Keyser, a doctor, and in 1950, with the arrival of her first child, gave up her concert career and concentrated on teaching.
They had two sons;
Paul de Keyser became a musician and music author.
Geoffrey de Keyser died in 2001.
She was a guest for
BBC Radio Four
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
's ''
Desert Island Discs
''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942.
Each week a guest, called a " castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usu ...
'' in July 2010. Although then aged 90, she was still teaching masterclasses and continued to be involved with every detail of the Leeds competition. "They call me Field Marshal Fanny" she said, "I am a busy breeches."
She donated her papers and memorabilia to the library of the
University of Leeds
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
in November 2017.
Waterman
turned 100 on 22 March 2020. She died at a care home in
Ilkley
Ilkley is a spa town and civil parish in the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, in Northern England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Ilkley civil parish includes the adjacent village of Ben Rhydding and is a ward within the ...
on 20 December 2020.
Honours and awards
Waterman was appointed
OBE in 1971,
CBE
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
in 2001 and
DBE in the
2005 New Year Honours
New Year Honours were granted in the United Kingdom and New Zealand at the start of 2005. Among these in the UK were knighthoods awarded to Mike Tomlinson, the educationalist; Derek Wanless, who led a review of the National Health Service; and ...
. She was also awarded the degree of
Doctor of Music
The Doctor of Music degree (D.Mus., D.M., Mus.D. or occasionally Mus.Doc.) is a higher doctorate awarded on the basis of a substantial portfolio of compositions and/or scholarly publications on music. Like other higher doctorates, it is granted b ...
(DMus)
honoris causa
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...
by the
University of Leeds
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
in 1992,
and also received honorary degrees from
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds Beckett University (LBU), formerly known as Leeds Metropolitan University (LMU) and before that as Leeds Polytechnic, is a public university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It has campuses in the city centre and Headingley. The univ ...
and the
University of York
, mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £8.0 million
, budget = £403.6 million
, chancellor = Heather Melville
, vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery
, students ...
.
Her contribution to the city of Leeds was further recognised in April 2006, when she was given the
Freedom of the City
The Freedom of the City (or Borough in some parts of the UK) is an honour bestowed by a municipality upon a valued member of the community, or upon a visiting celebrity or dignitary. Arising from the medieval practice of granting respected ...
.
References
Further reading
* Cummings, David M.; McIntire, Dennis K. (Ed.). ''International Who's Who in Music and Musician's Directory. In the Classical and Light Classical Fields'', 12th edition 1990/91, International Who's Who in Music 1991.
External links
Faber MusicLeeds Piano Competition timeline with photographs
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Waterman, Fanny
1920 births
2020 deaths
English classical pianists
English women pianists
Jewish classical musicians
21st-century classical pianists
21st-century English women musicians
Musicians from Leeds
British music educators
Women music educators
Piano pedagogues
People educated at Allerton High School
Alumni of the Royal College of Music
Academics of Leeds College of Music
English Jews
Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Musicians awarded knighthoods
English centenarians
Women centenarians
English people of Russian-Jewish descent
21st-century women pianists