Tessa Birnie

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Tessa Daphne Birnie OAM (19 July 1934 – 13 March 2008) was an internationally-acclaimed New Zealand concert pianist.

Birnie was born in Ashburton, New Zealand in 1934. She first heard a piano in a local hall when she was three or four, and decided then that the piano was to be her destiny.[1] Her mother took her to the North Island of New Zealand when she was 10, and she did not see her father again until she was an adult. She achieved the Royal School of Music's licentiate when she was 14. Instead of attending secondary school, she was taught by private tutors. Her music teachers included the Viennese Jewish refugee pianist Paul Schramm who was living in Wellington, New Zealand, and French pianists Nadia Boulanger and Yvonne Lefebure.[1] She gave a recital in Auckland when she was 14, and then toured New Zealand before travelling to Europe with her mother.[1] She lived in Paris, London and Lake Como in Italy, where she studied with Karl, the son of the Austrian pianist Arthur Schnabel. From the beginning, her mother, Edna Birnie, supported and encouraged her, performing the roles of "travelling companion, business manager, concert organiser and lady-in-waiting".[1]

She made her debut as a concert pianist in Paris in 1960. She was reunited with her father in the 1960s, on her return from Europe, around which time the family moved to Sydney where they lived in Middle Cove. After her parents died she shared her house with other musicians.[1] She founded the Sydney Camerata Orchestra in 1961 and the Australian Society for Keyboard Music in 1964.[2]

Birnie made many recordings, including a version of Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (1977), played at its original lower pitch with the composer's original pedals, and rediscovered numerous forgotten pieces for piano from the 17th and 18th centuries.[3] Highly acclaimed for her marathon performances in Australia and Europe, she also performed the entire cycle of Schubert sonatas in San Francisco in 1961 and Haydn's complete keyboard works in 1982.[2] Her music memory was "phenomenal".[1] She was awarded the West German Government's Beethoven Medallion in 1974.[4] She is the author of numerous texts on keyboard music, as well as a 1997 autobiography entitled I'm Going to be a Pianist!.

Birnie did not marry, and "her comforts were Jane Austen's novels and chocolates".[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Lawson, Olive. "Born to play to the world: Tessa Birnie (1924-2008)", The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2008. 
  2. ^ a b Leading NZ concert pianist dies, New Zealand Herald, 13 March 2008.
  3. ^ Tessa Birnie (sound recording): the only recording of the Moonlight sonata at lower pitch with Beethoven's pedals., University of Adelaide.
  4. ^ Oliver, Stephen: Jane Glover, The Musical Times, Vol. 115, No. 1582 (Dec., 1974), pp. 1042-1044.
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