Elly Ney (1882-1968) was a German pianist, especially associated with Beethoven and Brahms. She became one of the most prominent German keyboard figures of the first half of the twentieth century.

In the Pristine catalogue she appears with Max Fiedler in Brahms, preserving a strand of interwar German Romantic pianism.

Ney’s playing was forceful, serious and steeped in the grand German tradition. Her legacy is complicated by her political associations, but her place in performance history remains significant.

Her page is therefore best kept clear-eyed: an important pianist, historically consequential, and not a figure to wrap in soft-focus velvet.