Lily de Conti Manduca writes:

Mary Vella was one of our renowned concert pianists and a marvellous piano teacher.

I had known her for the last 70 years, having started piano lessons at an early age but it soon became more than a student/teacher relationship. We became firm friends and remained so until the end of her days.

She was a wonderful concert pianist working mostly under the baton of Paolo Nani. Under Nani she played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 for the then Princess Elizabeth who, as a young bride in the late 1940s, was living in Malta.

Mary, in conjunction with Nani, often composed ‘impromptu’ music for plays and so on. She also loved to travel and I accompanied her several times.

For the last nine years she was at home and I visited her regularly because her immediate family lives abroad. On my last visit, she gave me a special smile and that is how I will always remember her.

She has now moved to a better life.