Veronica Jochum, Boston Pianist and Conductor's Daughter, Dies at 93

Veronica Jochum, pianist and daughter of the conductor Eugen Jochum, died in July at 93. She was buried in Munich. The notification of her death reached the music community belatedly, according to Slippedisc, which reported the news.

Jochum taught at the New England Conservatory from 1965 to 2018 — a span of 53 years. She performed regularly at NEC's First Monday concert series at Jordan Hall and appeared with international orchestras. She left numerous recordings.

She was, by the account of those who noted her passing, a gifted but unassertive pianist. That tension — major lineage, major institution, low public profile — defined her career. Her father, Eugen Jochum, ranked among the most esteemed conductors of his generation. She carried that name in Boston for more than half a century without trading on it.

What did her repertoire choices say?

The record suggests a pianist whose convictions ran against her family's German past. Jochum was predeceased by her husband, Willo von Moltke, a Harvard University professor from a family active in the anti-Nazi underground.

Her musical attachments carried the same weight. Slippedisc reports she was particularly attached to two works:

• Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a Nazi prison camp.
• Karl Amadeus Hartmann's piano sonata 27 April 1945, which marks the forced prisoner marches out of Dachau.

These are not showcase pieces. Both confront the Nazi era directly. A conductor's daughter who built her life around repertoire memorializing its victims — the source does not say she framed it this way, but the pattern is there in her documented choices.

What does this change for Boston?

In practical terms, Boston loses a link to a vanishing generation. Jochum's NEC tenure began in 1965, when the conservatory's postwar culture was still young. Her First Monday appearances at Jordan Hall made her a fixture for audiences who may not have known her surname's full weight.

The belated notice itself is telling. A musician who taught for five decades and recorded extensively died in July, and the announcement followed late. Whether that reflects her own reticence or simple oversight, the source does not say.

Her recordings remain. So does the example of a career that measured itself in institutional loyalty and repertoire conscience rather than celebrity — a rarer thing with each passing year.