Nancy Weir - Biography

Biography

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" as she said. She studied piano in Melbourne with Edward Goll (a pupil of Emil von Sauer and grand-pupil of Franz Liszt) and Ada Corder (Freeman). As a child prodigy 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.

She moved to London, where she studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Harold Craxton. 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.

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".

In London she made her Proms debut with the Bach Concerto in A minor for 4 pianos, conducted by Sir Henry Wood. After graduation from the Royal Academy in 1936, she joined the Bangor Trio at the University College of North Wales.

The Second World War interrupted what promised to be a very successful career. She signed up in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) "without hesitation", in her own words, and did not tell the interviewing officer that she was a professional pianist. But she did tell him that she spoke fluent German. She had arrived in Germany as a teenager and she had even learned the German for English words that she admitted she did not know. 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.

However, word of her musical status leaked out. She was sent to Egypt and the then Palestine to entertain the troops, accompanying such artists as Paul Robeson and Beniamino Gigli. But her ever-vigilant ear was at all times listening. At the end of the war she was in Morocco and was told that she was to be flown to Rome, to attend the German language interrogations of POWs. In her description of the event her unique sense of humour shines forth: "I was to fly into Rome, but the Allies had destroyed the airfield, so I had to parachute in. I think I am the only classical pianist in history who ever parachuted into Rome."

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 Aynsley 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. 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, Norma Marshke, Robert Keane, Geoffrey Cox, Regis Danillon, Keith Crellin, Christopher Wrench, Arthur Do Rozario and the comedian Gerry Connelly.

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.

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.