Renowned violinist Wilma Smith receives 2025 Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award

The Award, established by the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, is presented each year to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to music in Australia. It honours the memory of Sir Bernard Heinze (1894 – 1982), a pioneer of orchestral life in Australia, who was Ormond Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne for over 30 years.

Wilma Smith, born in 1956 in Suva, Fiji, and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, is a violinist renowned for her contributions to orchestral and chamber music across Australasia. Her early musical education in New Zealand was followed by further study at the New England Conservatory in Boston, after which she co-founded the Boston-based Lydian String Quartet, winners of the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music in New York and multiple prizes at the Evian, Banff, and Portsmouth International String Quartet Competitions. Concurrently, she worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and led ensembles including the Harvard Chamber Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society.

In 1987, Wilma returned to New Zealand at the invitation of the Music Federation of New Zealand (now Chamber Music New Zealand) to establish the New Zealand String Quartet. Under her leadership, the Quartet toured extensively, including a tour of Australia for Musica Viva and performances at the prestigious Tanglewood Festival.

In 1993, she was appointed Concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) and honoured with the title of Concertmaster Emeritus when she left in 2003 to become Concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO).

Her MSO tenure was marked by numerous highlights, including a lauded performance of The Lark Ascending by Vaughn Williams, deemed by MSO's Chief Conductor, Sir Andrew Davis, to be “unquestionably the most beautiful” of all the performances of the work he had conducted.

On her retirement from the MSO at the end of the 2014 season, Sir Andrew described her as “an exceptional musician with whom I felt an immediate rapport”. Wilma still enjoys orchestral work whenever possible with the orchestras in Australia and New Zealand, including the Australian World Orchestra.

Alongside her orchestral achievements, Wilma has always pursued rewarding chamber music collaborations. She has maintained longstanding musical partnerships with renowned New Zealand and Australian musicians whom she regularly enlists to perform with the most exciting emerging young artists on her own Wilma & Friends series. Her life-long exploration of the string quartet canon has been re-energised in recent years by joining the Flinders Quartet as Second Violinist. She is also Co-Artistic Director of the annual Martinborough Music Festival in New Zealand.

Music education has always been an important part of Wilma’s work, including teaching at the University of Melbourne, Scotch College, Korowa Anglican Girls’ School and tutoring for the Australian Youth Orchestra. Emphasising her own passion for chamber music and its wider benefits, she has served since 2016 as Musica Viva Australia's Artistic Director of Competitions, including the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and Strike A Chord, the annual national chamber music competition for secondary and primary school musicians.

In presenting the award, Professor Gary McPherson, Ormond Chair of Music at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, said: "Wilma Smith’s list of achievements is extraordinary and beyond any doubt an example of the finest Australia has to offer the international music scene. She has served as Concertmaster of the New Zealand and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, and her career is replete with rave reviews from critics and conductors who have admired her outstanding performances as a violinist of the highest calibre.

"Across her career she has maintained her reputation as an orchestral and chamber music specialist with longstanding musical partnerships with renowned New Zealand and Australian musicians. Importantly, Wilma is known for mentoring young musicians and the opportunities she has given many now well-known professionals at the beginning of their musical careers. We celebrate her abilities as a violinist and thank her for the countless memories we have of performances she has given across the past four decades."

The Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award medallion, crafted from an original cast for each recipient, is made by sculptor Michael Meszaros.