“Victoria Ocampo has had a significant effect on the music of Argentina, whether as a member of the Board of Directors of the Teatro Colón or for her unconditional support of the group Renovación,” writes Jorge D’Urbano. Victoria was introduced to the world of music at a very young age. Her aunt Mercedes, who had studied music in Paris and could always be heard playing the piano in the Villa Ocampo, had her niece listen to the music of Chopin. The girl was enraptured: “It felt like this music squeezed my heart to the point of changing its shape. Or maybe it was the reverse, that in compressing it, its true shape was discovered, through a sort of painful pleasure.” After, Victoria was animated by the music of Fauré and Debussy. Whenever a relative passed away, it was a tradition in the Ocampo household to close and lock the piano for several days. Victoria never understood this rule: for her, music “was the natural place of refuge for such moments.”

When the conductor Ernest Ansermet arrived in Buenos Aires in 1924, Victoria fought to persuade him to remain in the city with the Orchestral Faculty Association (APO), an association to which she provided financial support. “For the first time, the Argentine public could hear not merely Ravel and Debussy but also Prokofiev, Honegger, Stravinsky, Falla, Malipiero…” recounts Vázquez. At the opening of Honegger’s King David Victoria recited a part in a flawless French; according to Castro’s wife “her performance was so sensational that the audience was left awestruck.” Victoria returned to the stage many years later for Stravinsky’s Persephone. While in New York in 1930, she was captivated by the spiritual passion she found in African-American culture and spent her nights at the Cotton Club to hear Duke Ellington. In the sixties, back in London, Victoria was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of a young foursome who, according to her, were bound to become the emblem of an era: they were The Beatles.