Eunice Norton (1908-2005)

Photograph from Ullstein Bild / Getty

An Underheralded Pianist Whose Life’s Work Is on YouTube

When a Twitter acquaintance put out a call the other day for followers to “Describe Your Taste in 10 Female Voices,” I was game, because it was as much a chance to learn from others’ choices of noteworthy artists as to share enthusiasms of my own. The list I offered ranged from Mary Lou Williams and Dawn Powell to Marguerite Duras and Gena Rowlands, and also included one lesser-known artist whom I similarly revere: Eunice Norton, a classical pianist (who was born in 1908 and died in 2005), whose work I’ve become familiar with almost exclusively from YouTube clips, of which there are more than a hundred.

The Eunice Norton Archive, her YouTube channel, carries listeners straight to an astounding performance, one that, had it been well known in its time, would likely have been history-making: her 1942 recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” which the site calls the first ever done on a piano rather than a harpsichord. (Claudio Arrau’s recording of it on piano was made in the same year, but it wasn’t released until 1988.) Norton plays the vast and intricate composition with glittering angularity and tactile intensity, intellectual grandeur and joyful energy that make it, from the start, no less bracing and imaginative than Glenn Gould’s celebrated 1955 recording. It should have made her a name to reckon with, rather than one of the thrilling obscurities of artistic history. Read more.