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Biggar Music Club's inaugural concert took place in the town's Municipal
Hall on Wednesday 13 January 1960. At the piano was Agnes Walker, accompanying
Tryphena Nixon (contralto), and tickets cost 3/6d. At a preliminary meeting
of 'invited music lovers' in September 1959, called to consider the formation
of a music club, one gentleman had "shown himself possessed of little
hope that the proposed venture would be a success", so the persevering
enthusiasts must have been delighted by the sale of 155 tickets. Agnes
Walker's own piano was brought from nearby Symington for the occasion
- the round trip, plus its "dismemberment and reconstruction"
under the skilled eye of a piano tuner cost three guineas.
The first piano owned by the Club was a
Steinway grand, bought in March 1960 for £20 "from a lonely
cottage near Turnhouse, Edinburgh, where the piano owner lived under the
shadow of eviction". Club committee member Mr. Herd who had been
authorised to purchase the instrument, was appointed 'Custodian of the
Piano'. Alas, within two years it transpired that this piano was not up
to the standard required by visiting musicians and a rebuilt Steinway
was bought from Steinway in London, and ceremoniously unlocked by Iris
Loveridge before her recital on 26 October 1964. The Club's guest pianists
have been playing on that same Steinway ever since, and glowing compliments
in the Visitors' Book testify to its outstanding tone.
More than forty years since that very first recital, Biggar Music
Club continues to bring world-class performers
and a wide range of music to Biggar, enriching
the cultural life of the town and surrounding
villages in South Lanarkshire. For
details of this season's concerts click
here .
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