Marie Novello

Marie Novello (1898 – 21 June 1928) was a Welsh pianist. She was one of Theodor Leschetizky's last students and performed in public from childhood. Her early death from throat cancer cut short a promising career just as she began to record for one of the major English labels, having already amassed a considerable discography for one of its second-rank competitors.

Marie Novello was born Marie Williams, in 1898 in Maesteg, Glamorgan, the daughter of one William Thomas Williams and Anne Bedlington Kirkhouse. She owed her name to adoption by her piano teacher, Clara Novello Davies, mother of Ivor Novello and also a celebrated singing teacher. Following studies with her mother, Marie was among the last students of Theodor Leschetizky. He denied her first request to study with him in 1912, as she spoke only English; she responded by learning German, whereupon he relented.

Novello's professional career began early. As a child, Novello won the principal piano prize at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, and she shared piano playing honors with Ferruccio Busoni at the September 1907 Cardiff Triennial Music Festival. In 1908, she toured the English provinces with a company assembled by Percy Harrison, a promoter who regularly organized such groups; among her compatriots were John McCormack, fresh from his first season at the Royal Opera House and participating in a Harrison tour for the first time, and Emma Albani. Around the same time, a 10-year-old Novello performed at Wigmore Hall, then known as Bechstein Hall. A year later, in 1909, she made the first of her seven appearances at the Promenade Concerts, when on 22 September she played the Piano Concerto no. 1 in E-flat by Franz Liszt accompanied by the Queen's Hall Orchestra led by Sir Henry Wood.

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