Adolph Baller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adolph Baller (July 30, 1909 – January 23, 1994) was an Austrian-American pianist who played classical and romantic music. He performed with Yehudi Menuhin for several years, toured internationally for decades with the Alma Trio, and was a renowned piano teacher at Stanford and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Baller was born July 30, 1909, in Brody, which at the time was in the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now in western Ukraine. At age 8, he went to Vienna to study piano with a former student of Franz Liszt. When he was 13 he gave his first solo performance, with the Vienna Philharmonic, following it with performances in all major European capitals.[1]
In March 1938, Nazi soldiers learned that he was a pianist and a Jew. They arrested him, beat him and crushed his hands. Baller's fiancée, Edith Strauss-Neustadt, interceded on his behalf with the Polish Consul in Vienna and helped to restore his hands through a long treatment so that he could resume his career. The couple escaped to Budapest, where they were married before coming to the United States in 1938.[2]
