A RARE performance by an internationally-renowned pianist has raised £2,500 for Kirkwood Hospice.

Rosalie Burston, now 71, played to a full house at the Hey Green Hotel, Marsden with a programme of work by Mozart, Ravel and Chopin.

She was teased out of retirement from her Shropshire home by Marsden guesthouse owners Ted and May Fussey, who met her while she was visiting the Pennines.

Mr Fussey organised the evening more than half a century after Rosalie, then Millman and aged 14, played her first concert with the North West German Philharmonic at Hamburg's Garrison Theatre to critical acclaim in the German press.

She had started learning the piano only four years earlier.

She returned to England and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy.

Over the next decade she played many concerts and recitals while also becoming a broadcaster.

She regularly performed the Morning Recitals live on the BBC Home Service, which was to become Radio 4.

Her musical career came to an end in 1960 due to events which she says ranged from "poverty and ill-health to marriage".

Mr Fussey said: "Anyone who witnessed Rosalie at the keyboard on the night was privileged and I'm sure it will be a lasting musical memory for them."

Ms Burston said: "I felt I was doing something positive, not just playing."