Draft:Rhona Marshall FRIAM: Difference between revisions

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Rhona Marshall (1903-1994) was a concert pianist, and teacher at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

Early Life

Rhona Marshall (née Clark) was born in Kilballyskea, Shinrone, Co. Offaly on 14 March 1903, to William Raymond Fitzmaurice Clark and Emily Fanny Clark, (née White-Spunner). She first learned to play the piano during her schooldays in Birr and Dublin. A former pupil recalled her describing how her mother drove her ‘in a trap drawn by a half-wild pony’ to her piano lessons in Birr.^[1] She was taught by Edith Best and later by the Italian composer Commendatore Michele Esposito, who taught piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music for forty years from 1882. She became Esposito’s special protegé.^[2]

Personal Life

In 1934 Rhona Clark married William George Marshall, son of William Kennedy Marshall and Ada Mary Elizabeth Marshall (née Den Keatinge).

Career

At eighteen, Rhona became an assistant teacher at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and she also taught music for a year at the girls’ school Hillcourt. She was taken on as a full member of staff at the Academy, and later elevated to professor.^[3] She also served as Chair of the Academy’s Board of Studies.

Rhona Marshall was the first winner of the Hamilton Harty Cup and played with the Dublin Philharmonic Society under Col. Fritz Brase, and the Chamber Ensembles led by Nancy Lord. She also played with the London Wind Quintet and the Alfred Barker Quartet. During the 1950s and 1960s she played in the Duo Sonata with the Czech violinist Jaroslav Vanecek. She played at numerous recitals and on radio and television. Early recordings of her playing for Radio Éireann (the forerunner to RTE Radio) in the 1940s are held in the RTE Archives, and include her performance of two preludes, and ‘Blue Hills of Antrim’, all arranged by Carl G. Hardebeck.^{[4] [5]}

She also taught at the Ulster College of Music in Belfast, travelling up every week from Dublin on the train. In 1963 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music.^[6]

Rhona Marshall Cup

In 1979 her pupils and friends presented the Rhona Marshall Cup for Junior Repertoire to the Feis Ceoil, of which she was by then Vice-President. The Cup, along with a gold medal and €100 prize, is still awarded annually.^[7] In 1990 it was won by 13-year-old Fínghin Collins.

Death

Rhona Marshall died on 2 January 1994, at the age of 90.

Notable pupils

• Paula Best – Head of Archives, Wigmore Hall
• Barbara Dagg – organist, teacher, lecturer
• Darina Gibson – pianist
• John Gibson – pianist, composer, teacher
• Roy Holmes – pianist
• Una Hunt – pianist
• Mairead Hurley – répétiteur, Conservatoire TU Dublin
• Frank McNamara – conductor, composer, pianist
• Bernadette Marmion – pianist, composer
• Liz Nolan – broadcaster, Lyric FM
• Peter O’Brien – jazz pianist

References