A nice original photograph of the English pianist, shown leaning atop the case of a grand piano with an open lid.

Hess was a celebrated English pianist, best known for her interpretations of the German Classical and Romantic repertories. She is also fondly remembered for her lunchtime concert series during World War II at the National Gallery in London, which she organized because concert halls were blacked out in the evenings to avoid detection by German bombers. The concerts were, remarkably, held every weekday for six and a half years, beginning just a few weeks after World War II began. Hess herself appeared 150 times, and she offered five guineas per concert to all those she enlisted to play, though she herself never took a fee. She was knighted by King George VI for this extraordinary effort to boost wartime morale in the city.