Rex Hobcroft

Rex Hobcroft AM (12 May 1925 – 23 September 2013) was an Australian pianist, conductor, composer, teacher, competition juror and music administrator. He was the first Australian pianist to play the complete cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas in public; he directed both the Tasmanian and New South Wales State Conservatoria of Music; and he co-founded the Sydney International Piano Competition.

Rex Kelvin Hobcroft was born in Renmark, South Australia in 1925. During World War II he flew aircraft in the RAAF, and after the war he was a commercial pilot for Ansett Australia for some time, while studying part-time at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, from which he graduated in 1948 with First Class Honours. He travelled to Paris for further study at the École Normale de Musique in 1949–50.

In 1952 he became an Examiner for the Australian Music Examinations Board, and from 1952–56 he worked as a school music specialist with the Music, Speech and Drama Branch of the Western Australian Education Department.

In July 1957 he wrote incidental music for a production in St George's Cathedral, Perth of T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral.

In 1957 Rex Hobcroft was appointed foundation head of the keyboard department of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane. He was only the second pianist appointed to a full-time teaching position at a conservatorium in Australia. He retained this position until 1961.

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