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Anita Crocus

Anita Crocus is a Welsh-born American. She obtained an undergraduate degree in Latin American studies from the University of the Américas in Mexico City, where her mentor and advisor was Professor Franz von Sauer, the youngest son of Emil von Sauer and Angélica Morales von Sauer. After teaching European history at the American-British-Canadian School in Mexico City, she earned a master’s degree in secondary education from Indiana University before serving as a State Department staff member in the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, in Washington, DC, and at the MBFR disarmament negotiations in Vienna, Austria. Thereafter relocating to the Pacific Northwest, she was a technical editor and writer for twenty-five years. Maintaining a life-long passion for opera, chamber, and symphonic music, she is a legacy member of the Theodore Thomas Society with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Title by Anita Crocus

  • Emil von Sauer Liszt’s Forgotten Protégé

    by Anita Crocus

    Emil von Sauer carried the torch of the Romantic piano repertoire well into the twentieth century. He won the French Legion of Honor, The Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, and Austrian peerage, among many other honors. He edited all of Brahms’s piano compositions, much of Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and some Beethoven.

    A brilliant pianist, prolific composer, and noted pedagogue, Sauer founded the Vienna Conservatory Piano Master School. Beloved in his adopted home of Vienna, he died two weeks after performing with the Vienna Philharmonic at their centenary celebration. Sauer’s life presents a compelling story woven through success, fame, economic adversity, two world wars, and persecution of his family by the Nazis. This is a story about honor, perseverance, and courage.

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