Dame Moura Lympany was one of the first in an internationally successful group of female British piano virtuosos to emerge in the twentieth century. She was born in Saltash, Devon, in 1916. Lympany showed unusual promise at the keyboard during her childhood, and began her formal training at the Liège Conservatory, in Belgium. Upon her return to England, she received an Ada Lewis Scholarship enabling her to continue her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, as a pupil of Coviello. Her other tutors included Paul Weingarten, Mathilde Verne, and Edward Steuermann, and Tobias Matthay, the last-named exerting the strongest influence upon her playing style was exerted by the German-born pedagogue Tobias Matthay.