Performances + Events
The New England Conservatory community mourns the passing of pianist Veronica Jochum, who died on June 24 at age 93. Jochum taught at NEC for 53 years, from 1965 to 2018, and was elected in 2019 to the Conservatory’s inaugural class of faculty emeriti.
Jochum was born into an artistic family in Berlin. Her father, Eugen, was an internationally celebrated conductor, and her mother, Maria, was a writer. Veronica Jochum studied with Josef Benvenuti in Paris and Edwin Fischer in Switzerland before accepting Rudolf Serkin’s invitation in 1959 to study with him at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
“Veronica Jochum had tremendous curiosity about music and about everything,” NEC Piano Department Co-chair Bruce Bruaker said. “(Her) background was so multilayered and culturally rich that she maintained throughout her life an intense interest in architecture, literature, art, politics. Her stories were many — about Calder, or Feuermann, Gropius, or Brendel.”
Throughout her distinguished career, Jochum performed with many of the world’s most renowned artists and ensembles, including cellists Colin Carr and Natalia Gutman, violinists Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, and Masuko Ushioda, and the Borromeo String Quartet (NEC’s faculty ensemble-in-residence), Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and London Philharmonic, among others.
Jochum made many notable recordings of works by Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Clara and Robert Schumann and presented numerous premieres of works by such revered composers as Osvaldo Golijov and former NEC President Gunther Schuller, whose Second Piano Concerto was written for her and first performed in NEC’s Jordan Hall. Among Jochum’s students at NEC were Richard Danielpour ’80, Cathy Fuller ’75 Prep, ’82, ’88 MM, and Randall Hodgkinson ’76, ’80 MM, ’82 AD.
Jochum performed often on NEC’s beloved First Monday at Jordan Hall series, whose founder and longtime artistic director, cellist Laurence Lesser, said, “She played with great authority, commitment, and success. She was a fine player.”
Lesser, who joined the NEC faculty in 1974, said Jochum “made a very significant contribution to the Conservatory.”
Pianist Wha Kyung Byun, who joined the NEC faculty in 1979, said Jochum “was a bridge to a glorious past.”
“She was an enormously serious and dedicated teacher” who brought great depth and wisdom to the Piano Department, Byun said.
Jochum married in 1961 into an aristocratic German family. Her husband, architect and Harvard University professor Wilhelm “Willo” von Moltke, had fled Nazi Germany in 1937. He died in 1987. Willo’s brother, Helmuth, a lawyer, was active in the German resistance and, for that resistance, was executed by the Nazis in 1945.
Lesser described Jochum as “a highly principled person.”
“Her life was very rich,” Byun said. “She was very humble, very grateful.”
“It mattered to Veronica Jochum to do the right thing,” Brubaker said. “And she inspired us all to try.”
Learn more about the extraordinary life of Veronica Jochum, for whom a funeral will be held on July 14 in Munich.
