Australia’s most internationally celebrated author of the first half of the twentieth century, Henry Handel Richardson (1870–1946), was at one time an aspiring concert pianist who also had a flair for music composition. Richardson’s accounts of her talents and achievements in music performance during her school days in Melbourne, and then at the Leipzig Conservatorium of Music, have been at best vague and at worst misleading. This article seeks to address the issues relating to Richardson’s musical training, competence, and reasons for abandoning a career of performance, through a comparative analysis with her friend and rival, Marie Hansen. An assessment of their shared and separate musical development in Melbourne and Leipzig calls for a re-evaluation of Richardson’s versions of events and, connectedly, the biographical interpretations that have followed.

二十世纪上半叶，澳大利亚最受国际关注的作家亨利·汉德尔·理查森（Henry Handel Richardson，1870-1946年）曾是一位有抱负的音乐会钢琴演奏家，他也擅长音乐创作。理查德森（Richardson）对自己在墨尔本上学期间以及随后在莱比锡音乐学院（Leipzig音乐学院）的音乐才能和成就的描述充其量是模糊的，也是最令人误解的。本文旨在通过与理查森的朋友和竞争对手玛丽·汉森（Marie Hansen）进行比较分析，来解决与理查森的音乐训练，能力和放弃表演事业的原因有关的问题。对他们在墨尔本和莱比锡的共同和独立音乐发展的评估要求对理查森的活动版本进行重新评估，因此，