Nancy Weir

In 1989, there was an archival exhibition at Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) of Weir's original concert programmes, war-time photographs and personal memorabilia. Thereafter, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Griffith University, Queensland Conservatorium. In 2002, she transferred to a retirement home in Brisbane and she died peacefully at Amity, New Farm, on 14 October 2008. Her funeral service began with a recording of her playing of Liszt's Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses.

The Second World War interrupted what promised to be a very successful career. She signed up in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Her knowledge of German caused her to be transferred from the WAAF to RAF Intelligence. She eventually became what she later described as, after the 50 years exclusion period for sensitive Second World War information had expired in 1995, "a musical spy". Her wartime duties as an intelligence officer included "sitting on a hilltop in Kent listening to the chatter of young German pilots – they were as young and foolish as we were. I think I prevented a few bomb attacks." She eventually attained the rank of Flight Officer.

Her awards include Officer of the Order of Australia (1995) for services to music and music education, an honorary D Mus from Griffith University, the FRAM and the University of Melbourne Conservatorium Centennial Award. The German Government awarded her the Beethoven Commemorative Medal in 1970.

During her Queensland years she notably led the Students' Symphonic Safaris bus tours throughout the state and, after retiring from the Conservatorium in 1980, purchased the Rialto Theatre in West End in 1983, which she ran successfully for a few years. Subsequent moves were to Townsville and Pinnacle, west of Mackay, where she bought, restored and lived in a deconsecrated church she renamed "Einsiedeln". "Einsiedeln" was the name of the area of Switzerland where her life was saved by an operation which left her partially deaf. Piers Lane and Weir performed together in this small wooden building. She was attracted to the area through the work of Dorothy Blines, a local piano teacher and co-founder of the Pinnacle Playhouse. Her final home was at Slade Point, Mackay, where for a time she ran a small grocery shop until she sold it after it had several times been invaded by burglars, whom she confronted with her faithful blue cattle dog, Digger, acting as her hearing-aid. Her previous dog, Cully, had also been a most faithful companion, and sometime stage "artiste". Both these dogs were strays who attached themselves to Weir with a tenacity only equalled by her love of them.

As part of the Arts Festival for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics she performed the Schumann Piano Concerto on 5 December, with the Victorian Symphony Orchestra under Sir Bernard Heinze. She subsequently threw herself into a busy teaching and performing career, making several recordings for the Spotlight label. In May 1966, she moved from Melbourne to take a position at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane. Here, her students included Piers Lane, Kevin Power, Bernadette Gorman, Norma Marshke, Robert Keane, Geoffrey Cox, Regis Danillon, Keith Crellin, Christopher Wrench, Arthur Do Rozario and the comedian Gerry Connolly. Piers Lane noted, ‘‘She could be difficult to cope with, but she had a wonderful sense of humour and a high intelligence. Quite a temper, too. But we didn’t clash, and had a stimulating relationship. I was inspired by her.’’

After the war she returned to performing in England, and she continued touring, making many appearances with famous conductors, including Willem van Otterloo, Alceo Galliera, Eugene Goossens, Arthur Fiedler and Nikolai Malko. But, again in her own words "things had gone cold by then, and it was difficult to re-start the career". When her father suffered a bout of ill-health in 1954 she returned to Melbourne to care for him, her mother having died earlier.

Her musical performances were characterised by great sensitivity and musicality and she was one of the best known Australian musical performers in the 1950s and 60s. Reviews of her performances included glowing references to "artistic integrity and musical sensibility of a high order", " fine technique and of fine interpretations" and "gradation of tone obtained with expert delicacy, and played with great subtlety."

She established a career as a performer In London during the period from 1936-1954, making her Proms debut with the Bach Concerto in A minor for 4 pianos, conducted by Sir Henry Wood. After graduation from the Royal Academy, she also joined the Bangor Trio at the University College of North Wales.

She moved to London, where she studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Harold Craxton from 1933-1936. She herself became the subject of several legends. One of these involved her being set to learn, by Craxton, the Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D minor. She arrived for her lesson the next week and played the work from memory. Craxton and others were astonished. She later explained that, as a student in Berlin, she had a fellow pianist neighbour who played a certain work that she did not know, for several hours every day. She learned this work by musical osmosis through the walls, and it turned out to be the Chaconne, which, until Craxton gave the music to her, she had never before seen. The work became a great financial asset for her, as she could guarantee certain competition prize monies by playing it, frequently having spent the money before she luckily, and predictably, won.

At age 13, she performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, under the English-born conductor Fritz Hart. Following this concert, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne set up a public subscription scheme for the young Weir to study with a great teacher in Europe. On arrival in Berlin, Germany, in 1930, she studied first with Edwin Fischer, but wangled her own way to studying with the legendary Artur Schnabel who she said was more fashionable. However, the "official" story is that Schnabel heard her and agreed to take her on as a student immediately. After the Nazis came to power, Schnabel left Germany in 1933, and so did Weir.

Another legend centres on her phenomenal musical ear. She could hear as many as five independent musical lines simultaneously. Most professional musicians have difficulty with three. She was described in London in the 1930s as having "the best musical ear since Mozart".

Teacher and pupil got on famously from the start, and Weir remained faithful to her teacher always, looking after the elderly woman to the very end. It was Ada, as Nancy referred to her, who suggested that the Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3 would be a suitable vehicle for a début concert. Corder was a perfectionist, and Weir remembered a tricky passage which she could not quite get right till Corder warned, "If you don't get it exactly correct, I will not let you play in the concert." The ruse worked, and the 13-year-old's performance on 6 July 1929, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Hart, caused astonishment amongst concert-goers and music critics alike. The maturity of her performance caused hundreds of people to follow her car after the concert was over. As she remembered, "They ran behind us, all the way up Collins Street." There was an enthusiastic review of the concert in The Sydney Morning Herald, published on Nancy's 14th birthday, 13 July 1929.

Nancy Mary Weir AO (13 July 1915 – 14 October 2008) was an Australian pianist and teacher.

Weir was born in Kew, Melbourne, on 13 July 1915. Her father was a publican who ran a small hotel in Lockhart, near Wagga Wagga, and she grew up "behind the bar". She studied piano in Melbourne with Edward Goll (a pupil of Emil von Sauer and grand-pupil of Franz Liszt) and Ada Corder (Freeman). She was renowned as a child prodigy, performing to great acclaim.

Weir's wonderful 1887 Steinway piano has now been fully restored. It may be seen in Greg Gesch's touching 14-minute video on YouTube.