NUI Galway and Music for Galway are preparing a memorial concert celebrating the life and work of Emily Anderson, a graduate of NUIG who had a huge impact on the music world.
Born in Galway in 1891, Emily grew up in the Quadrangle at NUIG as the daughter of then university president Alexander Anderson, and went on to become the university’s first Professor of German in 1917.
What drew Music for Galway to celebrate her life is the incredible work she did editing and translating the entire correspondence of Mozart and Beethoven.
Opening the thoughts of these musical giants to the English speaking world was a huge deal to lovers of classical music.
Her works published in the mid-20thcentury have remained to this day the go-to works for musicians, musicologists, documentary film-makers, writers, film-makers and lovers of music.
After spending several years working with the fledgling British Secret Service Emily finally moved to Britain in 1920 where she worked at the Foreign Office up until 1951.
She received an OBE for Intelligence for intelligence work she carried out in the Middle East during the Second World War.
The Federal Republic of Germany awarded her the Order of Merit First Class after her Letters of Beethoven was published in 1961, a year before her death in Hampstead, London.
For nearly two decades NUI Galway and Music for Galway have been celebrating the memory of Emily with a concert featuring the music of the composers she spent so much time researching.
A simple sign of what a huge figure she was, and remains, in music is that the concert bears her name all over, featuring Emily Anderson Prize winner violinist Benjamin Baker with pianist Daniel Lebhardt as well as young, promising Irish pianist Joe O’Grady.
The concert will take place twice next week, first at the Kevin Barry Room, NCH, Dublin on Tuesday, March 19 at 7.30 pm, and again at the Emily Anderson Concert Hall, NUI Galway on Thursday, March 21 at 8pm.
This year audiences can look forward to hearing three sonatas for violin and piano, two by Mozart and one by Beethoven.
Carrying on the tradition of using this as an opportunity to showcase promising young musicians, 13 year old Joe O’Grady will be opening the concert with Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata.
