While studying in London with Dame Myra Hess in 1959, Joel Ryce was introduced to Yaltah, who had come to play at the Bath Festival. A year later, after their marriage in America, on Joel’s birthday on 11 June 1960, the pianists were invited to play together at a festival in California. After that successful performance, they subsequently devoted a large portion of their time each season to joint appearances, playing solos, works for two pianos and television appearances in New York, Paris and Geneva.
In 1962, the Duo won the coveted Harriet Cohen International Music Award for their London debut, in a programme largely devoted to works for four hands by Schubert. In 1966, they performed the Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos under the baton of Yehudi Menuhin in Gstaad and other venues in Europe. In 1967, Yaltah and Joel recorded the entire duet repertoire of Mozart for Everest Records, the first time ever that this was done by one team of artists.
During their annual tours in America and Europe, they gave many charity performances, for such organisations as the Swiss Technical Overseas Relief, for mental hospitals, needy infants in Germany, the World Day of Peace at the Lausanne Swiss National Exposition and for the opening of United Nations Week in London.
Physical illness forced Joel to end his musical career in 1971. During the following years, strongly supported by Yaltah, he studied psychology in Switzerland with the founder of Sandplay Therapy, Dora Kalff, and became a very highly regarded Jungian psychotherapist.
Yaltah and Joel spent almost 40 years together and were devoted to each other. Following an extended struggle with cancer, Joel died on 31 March 1998, with Yaltah by his side. Yaltah continued to live at their home in Canfield Gardens, Hampstead, where she died on 9 June 2001.