Music for Galway’s annual Emily Anderson Memorial concert will take place next Thursday, October 10, at 7.30pm at the Quad in the University of Galway and will feature leading Italian pianist Maurizio Baglini. The venue is the hall in the Quad that was named after Anderson, to honour to her work as a translator and code-breaker.

Maurizio Baglini will perform two pieces for the occasion. The first is Beethoven’s elegant Piano Sonata No. 13 and the other is Liszt’s flamboyant transcription of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – he is one of the few virtuoso pianists in the world who performs it. Head of Music at UG, Dr Aidan Thompson, will give a short talk before the performance.

Anderson, who was born in 1891, had close links with what was then Queen’s College Galway, later UCG. Her physicist father, Alexander, became president of the college in 1899, after which the family lived in the Quadrangle, in the president’s quarters.

She was Professor of German there from 1917 until 1920, when she moved to the Foreign Office in London.

Anderson had long and distinguished career, during which she collected, edited and translated the letters of Mozart and later Beethoven, into English.

More recently, her work as a groundbreaking code-breaker for Britain during World War I, something she resumed during WWII, has been documented by author Jackie Uí Chionna, in her biography, Queen of Codes.

Tickets for the concert range from €11 to €22 and are available at www.musicforgalway.ie or 091 705962.

Pictured: Pianist Maurizio Baglini.