GERTRUDE CAREY MEMORIAL AWARDS FOR PIANISTS
2006

Presented by the ROYAL SCHOOLS MUSIC CLUB

Saturday 14th October 2006 (Starting time TBA)


SENIOR (UNDER 21) 1st PRIZE $500 2nd PRIZE $300
Senior Winner Teacher’s Prize (donated by Bernice Peters) $100
JUNIOR (UNDER 16) 1st  PRIZE $200 2nd PRIZE $100

CLOSING DATE FOR ENTRIES: Thursday 28th September, 2006

• Information Sheet (2006) (PDF file - click to download)
  (also available in Word format)
  
• Entry Form (2006) (PDF file - click to download)
  (also available in Word format)

The Gertrude Carey Memorial Award Fund

Former Pupils of Gertrude Carey

This Fund was established in 1989 by former students and colleagues of Miss Gertrude Carey LRAM, to encourage promising young pianists. Honorary Life Members, Helen Edmonds and Dawn Baldwin were pupils of Miss Carey and worked jointly with other former pupils to set up the Fund.

Prizes have been generously donated by Lynette Ryan in the past. Financial donations to the Fund have been contributed by many supporters. In 2004 the first time, Royal Schools Music Club member, Bernice Peters donated a prize of $100 to the teacher of the winner in the Under 21 section.

Book Prizes are generously donated by Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM Publishing).

All proceeds from the finals evening go into the Fund. Donations to support this Fund are welcome and are tax deductible. Please make donations out to: Gertrude Carey Memorial Fund.

Gertrude Carey

By Helen Edmonds

Gertrude Carey was originally from South Australia, gained the prized LRAM Diploma in London, and settled first in Claremont. A member of Perth College music staff for more than 12 years (until 1945), she also taught many Perth pianists at her home in Mt Lawley. Hers was the iron hand in the velvet glove.

Miss Carey was an active member of Royal Schools Music Club, where several of her pupils took part in recitals in the Lady Onslow Hall, Karrakatta Club, St George’s Terrace, Perth. With her flair for clothes in the days of hat and gloves occasions, Miss Carey was always fashionably dressed and impeccably groomed with never a hair out of place.

As good humoured, effusive and charming as she was, she revealed extensive powers of discernment in matters of character and musical importance. Her pupils accessed counterpoint, harmony, history, sight-reading, analysis, general knowledge and most important, musical phrasing. She never mentioned mechanical matters or hard physical work.

At home in Mount Lawley, Miss Carey’s small music room had a fireplace where wood was burned in winter, shelves of text books, piles of piano music, gramophone and records by Backhaus, Egan Petri, Dame Myra Hess, Harnet Cohen, Greseking, Claudius Arrau, and Alfred Cartot. A couple of Hans Heysen prints hung on the walls “to let the light in”. This room was dominated by two upright pianos, the black Bechstein much easier to play than the formidable Schwechten. Some pupils found playing this piano like having to ride an unfriendly horse.

Her influence as a teacher of music spanned after her arrival in Perth in 1920; informative years for her pupils June Epstein (Guest), past RSMC presidents Dawn Wilson (Baldwin), and Helen Priestner (Edmonds) who established the Carey Memorial Recital Awards in 1998. Many of Miss Carey’s pupils supported the idea and generously contributed to the fund – Eve Epstein (Church), Jan Meredith (Garrity), Henny Klopper (Coté), Betty Langsford, Ronaele Cockburn (Neilsmith), Hazel Potts, Catherine Minchin, Yvonne Rutledge and Ann Rutledge (Wood).

Numerous references to Gertrude Carey can be found in June Epstein’s autobiography “A Woman with Two Hats” (Hyland House, 1988). June, who recently died, adjudicated the first of the Carey Memorial Recital Awards.

The Carey Memorial Recital Awards

The competition is for pianists under 21, with a separate award for pianists under 16 from 1994. Each pianist presents a 15 - 20 minute programme of three contrasting items at advanced level from Baroque Era, Classical Period, Romantic Era and 20th Century before an adjudicator, with finalists presenting their programmes at an RSMC recital.

Past winners include: