Harriet Pearl Alice Cohen (2 December 1895 – 13 November 1967) was a British pianist.
Cohen was born on 2 December 1895 at 58 Angell Road in Brixton to Joseph Woolf Cohen (later Verney), a company secretary, accountant and composer of Jewish–Lithuanian descent, and Florence Cohen (née White, later Verney), a piano teacher of Polish–Jewish descent. The maternal great-great-granddaughter of the writer, watchmaker and translator Moses Samuel, Cohen was related to the pianist Irene Scharrer. The eldest of four siblings, Cohen was the sister of the soprano, broadcaster and educator Myra Verney (1905–1993).
Attending the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) from 1909 to 1915, Cohen studied piano under Tobias Matthay and Felix Swinstead and theory and composition under Frederick Corder. Whilst at RAM Cohen won the Sterndale Bennett, Edward Nicholls, and Hine prize, and was the youngest person to be awarded the Ada Lewis scholarship. During this period Cohen also studied at the Tobias Matthay Pianoforte School.
In 1914, Cohen made her debut at a Chappell's Sunday concert at the Queen's Hall. At this stage Cohen also had ambitions to be a composer: her Russian Impressions for piano (composed circa 1913) became her only original compositions to be published. 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 Quartet under the composer's supervision. A number of composers wrote music specifically for her, including John Ireland, Béla Bartók, 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 by Bartók are dedicated to her.
Cohen made the first of several BBC Radio broadcasts in 1927. She appeared on the BBC's nascent television service as early as 2 May 1938, performing music by Thomas Arne and Bach in a half-hour concert at their Alexandra Palace studio.
She 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. Pablo 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 Manuel 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 Leonid Polovinkin. These composers later sent her further compositions.
Cohen's influence went well beyond that of a musician. She became strongly associated in the 1930s with publicising the plight of German and Austrian Jews and even played a concert with the scientist Albert Einstein (Alfred's cousin) in 1934 to raise funds to bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. She became a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and Ramsay MacDonald as well as the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann.
Cohen was also a close friend of many leading figures of the time. These included not only musicians such as Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Edward Elgar and Sir William Walton, but also writers such as Arnold Bennett, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and D. H. Lawrence as well as politicians or entrepreneurs such as Max Beaverbrook and Leslie Viscount Runciman. Cohen became one of the most talked-about and photographed musicians of her day.
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 appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1938. She was made Commander of the Order of the Crown of Belgium in 1947 and received the Order of the White Lion of Czechoslovakia that same year. The Harriet Cohen International Music Award was introduced in her honour in 1951. Also in 1951 she was awarded Officier de l’Académie française. She was made a Cavalier of the Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil in 1954 and was made a Freeman of the City of London in the same year. Also in 1954, she was a recipient in Helsinki of the medal of the Sibelius Academy. She received the Stella Della Solidarietà Italiana in 1955. In 1958 Cohen was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland for her services to Finnish music.
She was the guest "castaway" on Desert Island Discs in January 1955 and was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1959 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.
She died in London. Her ashes rest in the Memorial Gardens at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire.
Efforts for refugees from Nazism
Harriet Cohen met the American journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1930 on her first tour of America, a tour which took in New York, Washington and the Library of Congress and Chicago, thus finally establishing a name for herself on the International stage. It was a meeting that was to change Cohen's life and awaken her Jewish consciousness. In 1933 Harriet Cohen travelled to Vienna to play a number of concerts, staying with Dorothy Thompson. She was profoundly moved by the plight of refugees, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who were pouring into the city from Germany. Thompson and Cohen were to correspond about the plight of Jewish refugees in Austria and Germany. Cohen was then able to pass on information from Thompson directly to the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who was at this time her intimate friend. Cohen met Thompson every time she went to America thereafter. From 1933 Cohen committed herself to work in Britain and the United States on behalf of refugees. This would result in a concert in America with Albert Einstein in 1934 to raise funds to bring Jewish scientists out of Germany.
In 1935 Ramsay MacDonald warned Cohen not to travel through Germany because the British Government would not be able to provide immunity for her. Soon after, Adolf Hitler passed the Nuremberg laws totally excluding Jews from public life.
Harriet Cohen had met Albert Einstein in Germany in 1929 when she had afternoon tea at his house. At the time Einstein disclosed that he played the violin and said that one day they should play together. Cohen kept her friendship with Einstein even after he had fled Germany in 1933. Cohen would often visit him in Oxford, England where he settled for a short time. Harriet's sister Myra studied there at Somerville College, where she gave a piano concert. In 1934, after Einstein moved to the United States, Harriet Cohen did finally play that duet concert with Einstein to raise funds to bring Jewish scientists out of Nazi Germany. Cohen and Einstein remained friends thereafter and he referred to her as "the beloved piano witch".
It was not until 1939 when she first met Chaim Weizmann, the future first President of Israel, that she began to support the Zionist cause and a Jewish homeland. Cohen's 1939 visit to Palestine extended her reputation there both as a concert pianist and politically. She argued with British and Jewish officials to try to get Jewish refugees admitted on ships from Nazi Germany (rather than be returned), once almost precipitating an International incident. Harriet Cohen believed passionately in a Jewish homeland but with justice to the Arab Palestinians. She survived two assassination attempts during her trip to Palestine. It was when Cohen was having dinner with Weizmann in London that Weizmann heard the news of the British Government's 1939 white paper to limit Jewish immigration to Britain to just 15,000 people a year. Blanche Dugdale, Arthur Balfour's niece, a fellow diner, prophetically said in an agonised voice, "What will happen to the millions fleeing from Hitler?"