Respected international artist ‘very much a warm personality’
WIDELYACCLAIMED concert pianist Georgina ZellanSmith enjoyed a successful international performing career in London in the 1960s and 1970s.
Among her professional peers were many of the finest musicians of that time.
She died peacefully at her home in Red Beach, Auckland, on July 3. She was 87.
ZellanSmith (nee Smith) was a former music pupil of Rona Thomson, of Dunedin, and she gained a bachelor of music degree at the University of Otago.
At the later suggestion of her musical agents, she added ‘‘Zellan’’, a name from her mother’s Swedish family ancestry, in order to become more readily identified when giving professional performances abroad.
In New Zealand, she had achieved what one newspaper termed an ‘‘amazing record’’ in the Royal Schools of Music examinations, gaining distinction marks from the English examiners, who conducted the examinations in this country.
She gained the LRSM (Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music) diploma in three branches: piano, theory and musicianship, with the highest marks in New Zealand in each subject.
At Otago she also won several prizes, including a Charles Begg Scholarship.
ZellanSmith later studied the piano, harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where her initial oneyear scholarship in 1953 was extended to a second year.
She was later appointed to the fulltime professorial staff.
A Radio New Zealand tribute recalled that she gave recitals several times at Wigmore Hall, performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded for the BBC, and engaged in masterclasses with Alfred Cortot, Geza Anda, Guido Agosti, and Nadia Boulanger.
She continued performances with the BBC and in the select London Piano Series, was also a longstanding artist on Radio New Zealand, and performed New Zealand works.
She played in major concert halls around the world, including as a soloist, and was an active adjudicator.
In her Centre for New Zealand Music SOUNZ biography, she said that, as a concert pianist, she did not specialise but enjoyed ‘‘a wide range of composer/ repertoire from Bach onwards’’, including some small keyboard works from an earlier period, and music by 20thcentury composers.
She became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to music, in 2009.
‘‘I have to share with you my amazing, wonderful life because it has been,’’ she said.
Fellow musicians had been ‘‘so important to me’’, all different and with star quality, and she felt ‘‘very privileged’’ to have known them.
A Dunedin relative, Averil Hopkins, reflected that Zellan-Smith came from very humble beginnings but had been ‘‘highly respected in the international music world’’.
She was a ‘‘truly lovely downtoearth lady and totally unpretentious’’, Mrs Hopkins said.
Georgina Elsie Smith was born in Milburn, the only daughter of George Smith, of a crofter family in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, and his wife Elsie.
After emigrating, her father became a carpenter and general handyman in Milburn.
ZellanSmith acknowledged her mother’s importance in developing her musical ability.
Her mother had decided the family needed a piano in the house. She arranged early piano lessons from Miss Pender Bryce, and bought a radio, increasing early access to music.
ZellanSmith became an avid player from a young age, and when she started at Otago Girls’ High School in Dunedin, she not only learned from Miss Thomson, a wellknown teacher, but also taught as a teenager, helping with some of the overflow of Miss Thomson’s large group of pupils.
After many years in England, ZellanSmith returned to New Zealand at the end of 1979, marrying Richard Bruce on January 3, 1980, and settling in Auckland.
She helped young musicians develop; kept touring, including in England; gave master classes as well as concerts; and sought to strengthen piano teaching in New Zealand.
In November 2011, she performed a classical concert in Timaru, using a 1.2tonne Alexander piano, believed to be the longest in the world, and built by Adrian Mann, now of Dunedin.
In October 2012, she gave a recital on the same piano at Alpine Farm, Pareora Gorge.
‘‘She wasn’t just a musician — she was very much a warm personality,’’ Mr Bruce said.
Also a warm family person, she developed a close relationship with his five grandchildren.
She is survived by her husband and several close relatives.