Anna Caroline Oury (née de Belleville) (24 June 1808 – 22 July 1880) was a German pianist and composer of French ancestry. Anna Caroline (Charlotte) de Belleville-Oury was born in Landshut, Bavaria, Germany. She was the daughter of a French aristocrat who was the director of the national Court Opera in Mannheim.[1] She studied with Czerny in Vienna between 1816 to 1820, where she met Beethoven and heard him improvise.[2] In 1829 she traveled to Warsaw where Chopin heard her play impressively enough for him to write about it in a letter, praising her "excellent" playing for its lightness and elegance.[3] Twelve years later, in 1841, Chopin dedicated his Waltz in F minor, Op. Posth. 70, No. 2, to Mme. Oury, though it went unpublished until 1855.
In July 1831 she made her London debut in Her Majesty’s Theatre with Niccolò Paganini and in October she married Antonio James Oury (1800–1883), a violinist at the King's Theatre in London and the two toured as a duo.[4][5][6] They performed in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Russia between 1831 to 1839 before settling in England, excepting a concert tour of Italy in 1846-7. Working with her husband, she helped to create the Brighton Musical Union in 1847, a club for chamber music modeled after the London Musical Union.[7] The remainder of Anna Caroline Oury's career was spent focusing on composition until her retirement in 1866, writing approximately 180 works for piano in this time.[8] Oury died in Munich in 1880 at the age of 72.
Oury published more than 200 works, including a number of transcriptions. Selected works include: