Else Cross: Pianist in Exile

Else Cross, born Else Krams on December 17, 1902, in Czernowitz, Bukovina, lived through one of the most turbulent periods in European history. Her life as a pianist and teacher was fundamentally shaped by the rise of Nazism, forced exile, and the challenge of rebuilding a musical career in a foreign land. While her post-war achievements were considerable, it was her wartime experiences and the struggle to maintain her artistic identity during displacement that defined her most profoundly.

Early Promise and Viennese Training

Cross was the daughter of David Osias Krams, a Jewish authorized signatory in Czernowitz. She demonstrated musical talent early, taking her first piano lessons at the local conservatory with Aglaia Klug, a prominent music teacher in the region. Even as a young girl, she performed concerts in her home area, showing the confidence and ability that would serve her throughout her career.

Around 1929, Cross moved to Vienna to pursue advanced musical studies. The timing proved fortuitous, as Vienna was then a centre of musical innovation and intellectual ferment. She initially studied piano at the Vienna Academy with Ella Kerndl, but soon sought more intensive training with Eduard Steuermann, a key figure in the Schoenberg circle, and Anton Webern, one of the leading composers of the Second Viennese School.

Webern's influence on Cross extended beyond piano technique. He deepened her understanding of harmony and taught her analytical skills that would inform her interpretation of musical pieces throughout her career. Her studies were comprehensive: she enrolled in musicology at the University of Vienna, working with distinguished scholars including Robert Lach, Egon Wellesz, Alfred Orel, and Robert Haas. She completed a dissertation titled "The German Lyric Piano Piece from Mendelssohn to Reger" in 1934, though she never received her doctorate.

In 1931, Cross married her cousin, Dr. Leonhard Gross, a lawyer who had been her neighbour in Czernowitz. This personal stability provided a foundation for her emerging professional career in Vienna. From 1933, Cross worked as both a pianist and piano teacher in Vienna. She moved within the city's intellectual circles, connecting with figures such as Frank Wedekind, Arnold Schoenberg, and Sigmund Freud. Her debut performance came in 1933, and by 1935 she was performing as a soloist with the Vienna Concert Orchestra, marking her emergence as a serious professional musician.

Her concert career expanded beyond Vienna's borders. Guest appearances took her to Paris, Zurich, Milan, Rome, London, and Bucharest, establishing her reputation across Europe. In 1938, she gave the world premiere of Egon Wellesz's Suite Op. 56, demonstrating her commitment to contemporary music and her position within the progressive Viennese musical community.

However, this promising career was about to be violently interrupted. With Hitler's annexation of Austria in March 1938, Cross's personal security as a Jewish woman married to a Jewish lawyer became precarious. The world she had built in Vienna was suddenly untenable. Cross fled to England in 1938 with her mother and husband, joining the thousands of refugees who sought safety from Nazi persecution. The transition was jarring and difficult. She had to learn to assert herself in a foreign environment, separated from the cultural milieu that had nurtured her development as an artist.

The bureaucratic reach of Nazi persecution followed her even in exile. In 1941, she came to the attention of the editors of the "Lexikon der Juden in der Musik" (Encyclopedia of Jews in Music). The University of Vienna, responding to Nazi inquiries, reported that the former student was of "German ethnic origin" and non-denominational, but noted that her husband was Jewish. This attempt to categorize and track her movements illustrated the systematic nature of Nazi persecution and its impact on displaced intellectuals.

Meanwhile, her husband joined the British Army, leaving Cross to navigate her new circumstances largely alone. The family name was anglicized from Gross to Cross during this period, marking another break with their Austrian past.

Musical Life in Wartime Britain

Despite the upheaval, Cross gradually reestablished her musical career in Britain. Her sense of home was partially restored through reunions with Viennese acquaintances who had also fled, including Egon Wellesz and Karl Rankl. She formed friendships with other emigrated representatives of the Schoenberg/Webern movement, including Erwin Stein and Leopold Spinner.

These connections proved professionally valuable as well as personally sustaining. Cross became involved in several premieres and first performances in England of works by the Viennese School, helping to introduce British audiences to the musical innovations she had learned first-hand in Vienna. Among her notable performances was the British premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's "Ode to Napoleon," connecting her wartime audience with music that spoke to themes of resistance and defiance.

Much of her performance work during this period was in collaboration with other musicians. She frequently performed in duos, often accompanied by violinists, and worked with various partners including Dea Gombrich, Rosemary Rapaport, John Davies, and Hermann Baron. This collaborative approach may have reflected both the practical necessities of wartime performance and her desire to maintain musical connections in her new environment. In 1946 Leopold Spinner met Cross. As a pianist she consistently stood up for Spinner in concerts and teachings and remained the only musician who continuously performed his works.

Cross also performed on both British and Austrian radio during and after the war, though most of these recordings have been lost. The BBC tapes are completely missing, and only one recording exists in the ORF archives, making it difficult to assess her performance style during this crucial period.

After World War II, Cross formed a significant musical partnership with violinist Rosemary Rappaport, who had also moved to London. This collaboration lasted for over 25 years and became a cornerstone of Cross's post-war career. Their concerts included prestigious recitals at the Wigmore Hall, one of London's most important chamber music venues. The duo's programmes were notable for their combination of rarely heard classical works alongside the standard repertoire, reflecting Cross's commitment to expanding audiences' musical horizons while maintaining connections to established traditions. Cross was able to resume concert performances in German-speaking countries. She played in Hamburg, Salzburg, and Vienna, returning to places that had been closed to her during the Nazi years. However, the musical landscape had changed, and she was now an outsider returning to scenes of former triumph.

Cross continued teaching at various colleges while rebuilding her performance career. The stability she had known in pre-war Vienna was not easily replicated, and it took years to establish a secure position. It was not until 1962, nearly a quarter-century after her exile began, that she was offered a professorship for piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

This appointment marked a turning point. Cross worked at the Royal Academy for over twenty years until her retirement in 1982, training a new generation of pianists and passing on the musical knowledge she had gained from her distinguished teachers in Vienna. Even after retirement, she continued giving private lessons to music college graduates seeking improvement and offered adult education courses for less experienced students.

Cross also contributed to musical scholarship through essays on musical topics and established two prizes: a Brahms Prize and an interpretation prize for contemporary piano music. These initiatives reflected her commitment to both traditional and modern repertoire, bridging the musical worlds of her youth and maturity.

The Weight of Displacement

Cross's life illustrated the profound impact of political upheaval on individual artistic careers. Her formation as a musician occurred within a specific cultural context—the innovative, intellectually rich environment of interwar Vienna. When that world was destroyed, she faced the challenge of maintaining her artistic identity while adapting to entirely different circumstances.

The exile experience was not merely a geographical displacement but a cultural and professional disruption that required constant adaptation. Cross succeeded in rebuilding her career, but the trajectory was fundamentally altered by the years of uncertainty and reconstruction that followed her flight from Vienna.

Her story reflected the broader experience of intellectual and artistic refugees from Nazi Europe, many of whom made significant contributions to cultural life in their adopted countries while carrying the weight of loss and displacement. Cross's ability to continue performing and teaching contemporary music, particularly works by the Viennese School, served as a living link between the destroyed world of Central European musical culture and its new manifestations in exile.

When Cross died on October 31, 1987, at her home in London, she had lived nearly fifty years in Britain—longer than her time in Austria and Czechoslovakia combined. Yet her musical identity remained rooted in the training and connections she had made in Vienna during the brief flowering of her early career, before war and persecution forced her to begin again in a foreign land.

Sources

Else Cross, Orpheus Trust (accessed June 2025)

Else Cross, Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians (accessed June 2025)