Adolph Baller
{{Short description|Austrian-American pianist}}
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.
Early years
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.{{Cite news|url=https://news.stanford.edu/pr/94/940125Arc4484.html|title=Pianist Adolph Baller dies at 84|date=25 January 1994|work=Stanford University News Service|access-date=29 January 2019|archive-date=6 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160606095655/https://news.stanford.edu/pr/94/940125Arc4484.html|url-status=dead}}
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.{{Cite news|url=https://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/listings/1997_Nov_7.2NDART07.html|title=Remembering Adolph Baller the way he'd want--with music|last=Smith|first=Kendra|date=7 November 1997|work=Palo Alto Online|access-date=29 January 2019}}
Career
While Baller worked as a pianist for the WQXR radio station in New York City, he met violinist Yehudi Menuhin and cellist Gabor Rejto.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/28/obituaries/adolph-baller-pianist.html|title=Adolph Baller; Pianist|date=28 January 1994|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-01-29|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} Beginning in 1941, the Ballers lived with their daughter, Nina, at Menuhin's Alma Estate in Los Gatos, California.{{Cite news|url=https://news.stanford.edu/pr/97/971105baller.html|title=Piano recital by Adolph Baller students scheduled for Nov. 12|last=Manuel|first=Diane|date=5 November 1997|work=Stanford University News Service|access-date=29 January 2019|archive-date=20 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211120041138/https://news.stanford.edu/pr/97/971105baller.html|url-status=dead}}
For several years Baller accompanied Menuhin in performances throughout the world and performed in chamber concerts, being particularly active during World War II with performances for troops deployed overseas.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1AQFAAAAMAAJ|title=Unfinished Journey|last=Menuhin|first=Yehudi|publisher=Knopf|year=1977|isbn=9780394410517|pages=154|language=en}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.ram.ac.uk/museum/item/24606|title=Portrait of Yehudi Menuhin with pianist Adolph Baller, performing in the Aleutian Islands, 1944. Black and white photograph. - Royal Academy of Music|website=www.ram.ac.uk|access-date=2019-01-29|archive-date=2019-10-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191023142513/https://www.ram.ac.uk/museum/item/24606|url-status=dead}}
Under Yehudi Menuhin's patronage, Baller, Gabor Rejto and Roman Totenberg formed the Alma Trio in 1942–1943 at Menuhin's Alma estate in Los Gatos, California.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XUVEa8_EdV4C&q=Adolph+Baller+fund&pg=PT160|title=Note-Perfect: Thirty Years in Classical Music Recordings|last=Cornfield|first=Giveon|date=2013-01-18|publisher=Xlibris Corporation|isbn=9781479777983|language=en}} Violinist Maurice Wilk joined the Alma Trio after Totenberg retired. Following Wilk's sudden death in 1963, violinist Andor Toth joined the Alma Trio and remained their violinist for the next 15 years, before the trio wound down their touring in the mid-1980s.
Later years
Baller served as a faculty member at Stanford University for over 30 years. Among his most notable students were pianists Jerome Rose, William Corbett Jones, Xenia Boodberg Lee[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29927919/xenia_boodberg_lee_1969/ "Piano Recital"] The San Francisco Examiner (May 2, 1969): 33. via Newspapers.com and Nohema Fernández.{{cite book|title=The Grove Dictionary of American Music|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UQiiDAEACAAJ|date=January 2013|publisher=OUP USA|isbn=978-0-19-531428-1}}
In 1984, the Music Guild at Stanford created an endowment fund in his honor, providing scholarship assistance to piano students at Stanford.
He died at his home in Palo Alto on January 23, 1994, aged 84.
References
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Category:Austrian classical pianists
Category:Austrian male classical pianists
Category:San Francisco Conservatory of Music alumni
Category:20th-century classical pianists
Category:20th-century American pianists
Category:Jewish classical pianists
Category:American classical pianists
Category:American male classical pianists
Category:American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Category:Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United States