11 Portland Street 

Pioneer of children's music education  since 1860

When you visit our studio,  you would see a little tablet on the wall, dedicated to three famous and talented musicians, noted pianists and  composers  who lived there: Adela Verne, Mathilde Verne and Mary Würm 

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The three world-famous musically-talented sisters lived at 11 Portland Street in the centre of Southampton. Their parents, John Evangelist and Sophie, were a German couple with the surname Wurm who changed their name to the more Anglicized Verne when they moved to England in c.1866. Both parents were music teachers. The family lived at Portland Street from 1866 to 1892.

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Mathilde Verne was born in 1865 and made her name as a teacher of the piano. She taught many famous people, including Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the later Queen Mother.

Alice Barbara, born in 1868, was the most exceptional sister as a composer. Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted a performance of her most famous work, the Mass in B Flat. She died in 1958.

Adela, who was the youngest of ten children, was born in 1877. She was taught piano initially by her sisters Alice and Mathilde and later by the celebrated Ignace Jan Paderewski. She went on to be regarded as one of the greatest woman pianists of her era, ranked alongside the male keyboard giants of the time. She toured with great success in many parts of the world. She died in 1952.

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Another daughter, Maria, kept the name Wurm and was better known in Germany as a pianist and composer.

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The sisters are commemorated by a plaque on the wall of 11-12 Portland Street 

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Alice Barbara Verne

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Adela Verne was born in 1877 and was an important English pianist and composer of German descent. She was considered one of the foremost female pianists of her generation and she frequently toured the world playing in all the major concert halls. Adela was born into a musical family, she had nine siblings altogether, and three of her sisters were also notable pianists or composers: Mathilde,  

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Clara Schumann heard Adela play when she was a small girl and was so impressed that she wanted to take her to Frankfurt for study, as she had done with Mathilde, however her parents would not permit this. Instead, she was instructed by Mathilde and Alice, and later by Clara Schumann’s daughter Marie Schumann.

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At age 13 she made her debut with Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, conducted by Sir August Manns at the Crystal Palace concerts series. Tchaikovsky himself heard of this astonishing young prodigy and wanted to meet her. The following year she was introduced to Ignacy Jan Paderewski. He was so impressed with her playing that he predicted a great future for her and subsequently taught her at his home in Switzerland.

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Adela Verne was hailed as the successor to Teresa Carreño, and was equally praised by North and South American, Australian, European and British audiences and critics. In Vienna, after hearing her play four concertos in one evening, Theodor Leschetizky gave her the rare honour of asking her to give a recital to his own pupils.

 

Her wide repertoire included a large amount from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, but also much from the Twentieth century. She often appeared in chamber music recitals at the St James’s Hall concerts, alongside artists such as the violinist Joseph Joachim and the cellist Alfredo Piatti.

 

She toured Australia with Dame Nellie Melba, and was associated with other singers such as Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci and John McCormack, and violinists such as Mischa Elman, Eugène Ysaÿe amongst others. She appeared regularly at the Proms, and was the first British artist to give a solo recital at the Royal Albert Hall.

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Adela was the first woman in England to play the  Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in B flat major; it had previously been considered too demanding for women! She gave the first performance of the Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 B flat minor Op. 23 in Australia, the first performance in the United Kingdom of César Franck’s Symphonic Variations and the first television performance of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos K. 365, with her son John Vallier, also a noted pianist and composer.

 

 

In 1952 she broadcast a special programme of works by Paderewski for the BBC and her last public appearance was at the special Jubilee Concerts celebrating the Wigmore Hall. She was preparing for her first recital at London’s new Royal Festival Hall, when she died, on 5 February 1952, aged 74.

She also composed a variety of works, including a Military March dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother.

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Alice Barbara Verne-Bredt (née Würm; 1864–1958) was an English piano teacher, violinist and composer. She was born  in Southampton to Bavarian professional musicians who emigrated to England in the 1850s. Her father, a music teacher who specialised in zither, violin, and piano, worked as an organist. Her mother was a violinist who taught her the violin from a very early age.Later in her childhood she moved to London, where she lived all her life and there was taught piano by Robert and Clara Schuman's daughter, Marie.

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Alice wanted to become a singer, but typhoid fever affected her voice. In 1893, her family anglicized their surname from Würm to Verne, and Alice married William Bredt, an amateur musician and conductor. Both greatly contributed to the success of the piano school set up in London by her sister Mathilde in 1909. During the same period she also established The Twelve O'Clock Concerts, a successful concert series for chamber music at the Aeolian Hall in London, where some of her own chamber music was performed.

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Alice took over the school's junior department, where Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, had a wedding march written especially for her.

 

There she became a pioneer of children's music education and an innovator in the use of percussion bands for that purpose.

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