Town Hall, Music Performance, Program, Australian Broadcasting Commission, ABC, Celebrity Concert Season, 1950s, Victorian Symphony Orchestra, Aleco Galliera, Nancy Weir, Bertha Jorgensen
Summary
Programme for the third of the 1951 Victorian Symphony Orchestra subscription concerts - the Blue Season. Conducted by Aleco Galliera, Soloist Pianist Nancy Weir. Performed at the Melbourne Town Hall 1951.
This programme is one of over 300 Town Hall music programmes held in the collection. Dating from the 1920s until the 21st Century, these programmes document performances by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir, the annual Sun Aria Competition, as well as the performances of visiting soloists and conductors from around the world. The advertisements within the programmes are equally fascinating, featuring adverts for TAA Airlines, Berlei, Benson and Hedges cigarettes, and local Melbourne businesses selling everything from records to furs.
The soloist featured in this performance, pianist Nancy Weir, was an important figure in the history of Australian music. A piano prodigy, Weir first performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra when she was 13, after which a benefit concert was arranged by the Lord Mayor Sir Harold Luxton to send her to Europe for further musical study. Her performing career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which she served in the Royal Airforce Intelligence Services. While performing for the troops as a cover Weir used her knowledge of German to interrogate German POWs and in her own words she served as a “musical spy.” Following the war she continued touring internationally as an artist, returning to Australia where she continued to perform with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In 1966 she relocated to Brisbane to take up a teaching position with the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. She was the recipient of an Order of Australia in 1995 and received an honorary doctorate from Griffith University. She died peacefully in 2008.
The violinist, Bertha Jorgensen, is also a notable figure in the history of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and classical music in Australia. Jorgensen was one of the longest serving members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, making her debut in the orchestra at only 15, and leading the orchestra before she was 20. She was the first woman to lead an orchestra in Australia, and would continue to play in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra well into the 1970s, despite criticism from well-regarded conductors and musicians that as a woman she was unfit to lead an orchestra. For her contribution to Australian music Jorgensen was made a civil member of the Order of the British Empire in 1960.
