Rhoda Coghill

Rhoda Sinclair Coghill (14 October 1903 – 9 February 2000) was an Irish pianist, composer and poet. Biography Rhoda Coghill was born in Dublin and studied from the age of eight with Patricia Read at the Leinster School of Music. Between 1913 and 1925 she won 21 prizes at the Feis Ceoil (Irish music competition), among them first prizes for piano solo, piano accompaniment and piano duet, after 1923 for composition. In that year she completed her largest score, the rhapsody Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking for tenor solo, mixed chorus and orchestra, to a text by Walt Whitman. Coghill also played double bass in the orchestras of the Dublin Philharmonic Society and Radio Éireann. She continued her piano studies with Arthur Schnabel in Berlin (1927–8) to whom she had been recommended by Fritz Brase. In 1939 she took a position as the accompanist of Radio Éireann, where she remained until 1969. In this capacity she has worked with major performers of her day, both Irish and international, and gave exemplary interpretations of contemporary Irish works. She was known for remarkable sight-reading capacities and her absolute ear. She also appeared as a concerto soloist, reliably attractin