Dame Fanny Waterman
Founder of the Leeds International Piano Competition who was described as ‘a human dynamo’
DAME FANNY WATERMAN, who has died aged 100, was the author of books and graded tutors which nurtured the talents of young pianists throughout the world; in 1963 she founded the triennial Leeds International Piano Competition, which launched the careers of such virtuosi as Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu.
Affectionately known throughout Leeds as “Field Marshal Fanny”, Fanny Waterman made up with her iron will and Yorkshire blunt-speaking for what she lacked in physical stature. One former winner of the Leeds competition described her as “a combination of human dynamo and bulldozer” and, until she was well into her nineties, she presided over the event with nit-picking attention to detail – proofreading programmes, even checking hotel rooms.
The fact that the Leeds Piano Competition survived bouts of controversy was entirely due to her determination. “We understand that she is hooked into the national grid and provides part of the Leeds lighting system,” a former Arts Council chairman observed.
Frances Waterman was born in Leeds on March 22 1920. Her father, Myer Waterman, a Russian Jew, had emigrated to England to work as a jeweller and Fanny recalled that despite the fact that the family house did not have an inside lavatory until she was 19, her parents taught her “proper values”: “They didn’t respect anything that money could buy. It was health, integrity, beauty.”
She showed her musical talent almost before she could walk and, as a schoolgirl, played Hymns Ancient and Modern on the piano at Chapel Allerton High School. She began to study piano with Tobias Matthay when she was 17, started giving public performances and in 1941 opened the concert season in Leeds with the Leeds Symphony Society.
She then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and studied under Cyril Smith. But her studies were curtailed by the war and, given the choice between joining the Women’s Land Army or teaching, she chose the latter and found her true vocation.
In 1944 she married a young doctor, Geoffrey de Keyser, and when their first child was born in 1950 she gave up concert work altogether. Her husband became a GP in Leeds, and she returned there as “the local piano teacher”. “My pupils had the habit of winning prizes and appearing in public aged 11 or 12,” she told The Sunday Telegraph in 2015. “The newspapers said the age of miracles was not over.”
By 1960 her pupils included some of the most remarkable child pianists Britain had ever produced, among them Allan Schiller, who gave an Edinburgh Festival recital at 13, and Michael Roll, who played a Mozart concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the age of eight.
Part of the secret of her success was undoubtedly her fierce willpower. Roll had originally had ambitions to train as a doctor, but as he recalled, “Fanny’s a very forceful person. There’s not much point in arguing with her.”
But Fanny Waterman became disillusioned when she found that her most promising pupils were being advised not to waste their talents in a provincial backwater like Leeds.
Thinking of ways to boost the city’s cultural reputation, she woke up one night with the idea of starting a piano competition.
Her husband dismissed the idea, saying that it could only work in the capital city. But Fanny refused to be deterred, and by 1963 had begged and bullied £8,500 out of the Leeds business community to stage the first competition: “I knew I could count on Yorkshire hospitality,” she recalled. Arthur Bliss, Master of the Queen’s Music, agreed to chair the jury and participants were invited from all over the world.
Fears that the competition would turn out to be a flop were dispelled by the controversy which erupted when the jury (of which she was not a member) awarded the first prize to her own star pupil, Michael Roll. It caused her some embarrassment but put Leeds firmly on the map. Two years after the first competition, Fanny Waterman was joined by her lifelong friend and fellow concert pianist, the Countess of Harewood (later Marion Thorpe), in running the competition.
The controversy over Roll was the first of many. In 1969, for example, Fanny Waterman herself intervened when it seemed that the jury was going to omit the brilliant Romanian Radu Lupu, the public’s clear favourite, from the final round.
In subsequent years, there were complaints about the mediocrity of some of the winners and surprise at the obvious virtuosity of some of the also-rans (Mitsuko Uchida, John Lill, Myung-whun Chung and András Schiff). There were also more general complaints about the “gladiatorial” nature of the competition and the alleged neglect of contemporary music for old favourites.
Fanny Waterman admitted that the jury could not always get things right, but was justly proud of what the competition had contributed to music. She recalled that, after hearing the debut recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall by Murray Perahia (who won the 1972 competition), the late Clifford Curzon sent her a letter in which he wrote: “What greater and more touching pleasure is there in life than giving a young and beautiful talent a little lift in the direction (only, for we can never reach them) of the stars.”
Outside the competition, Fanny Waterman continued to teach piano into her eighties and was the joint author (with Marion Harewood) of 40 graded tutors that have been used by just about everybody who has ever aspired to learn the instrument.
The publication of the first Waterman/harewood Series in 1967 launched Faber Music’s educational list. Their piano tutor series Me and My Piano, published in 1989, became a bestseller. In On Teaching Piano and Performance (1983), Fanny Waterman distilled the knowledge and experience of her teaching career.
Fanny Waterman remained as chairman and artistic director of the Leeds International Piano Competition until her retirement in 2014 at the age of 95. Earlier this year, in an interview with the BBC, however, she complained that she had been forced out of her role due to her advancing years. “I didn’t think it was the right time,” she said. “I wanted to be there forever … I had many, many more years to give of my own passion, my own knowledge, and everything.”
Fanny Waterman was honorary president of the Harrogate International Festivals from 2009 and patron of the Purcell School for Young Musicians. She was appointed OBE in 1971, CBE in 2001 and DBE in 2005. Her contribution to the city of Leeds was recognised in April 2006 when she was given the Freedom of the City.
Until his death in 2001, her husband, Geoffrey de Keyser, with whom she had two sons, played a valuable and active part in the Leeds Competition and travelled with his wife all over the world as she worked as an international juror and as vicepresident of the World Federation of Music Competitions.
Dame Fanny Waterman, born March 22 1920, died December 20 2020