She started giving public performances, and in 1941 opened the concert season in Leeds with the Leeds Symphony Society.[1] The following year, she appeared at The Proms as one of the soloists playing the Bach Concerto for three harpsichords in C major (BWV 1064), conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, but her concert career was disrupted by the Second World War.[2] She played duos with the violinist Erich Gruenberg.[4]
Waterman's notable students include Paul Crossley,[2][6]Jonathan Dunsby,[7]Benjamin Frith, Michael Roll and Allan Schiller; Roll won the inaugural Leeds competition and her students were also successful in other international competitions.[2] 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.[2]
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.[2] She co-wrote Piano Competition: The Story of the Leeds with Wendy Thompson (1990). Her autobiography, My Life in Music, was published in 2015.[2]
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.[10] They had two sons;[2]Paul de Keyser became a musician and music author.[10] Geoffrey de Keyser died in 2001.[2]
She was a guest for BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs 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."[11]
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.