This week, I am moving on to Eugen Jochum. Jochum was a very famous conductor during the post WWII period. He is renowned for his interpretations of Bruckner. I think that is is important to note that nearly all the conductors whom I have posted came up through opera houses. We don’t have this type of pathway today, and I think that modern conducting suffers for it. Below is an excerpt from Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. I have also added a link to a performance of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony. It is a long piece, but well worth the time to listen to it.
Eugen Jochum
November 1, 1902 – March 26, 1987
Eugen Jochum was born into a family of strong musical and Catholic tradition: his father was both an organist and an active local conductor, directing a wide variety of music. The young Jochum participated in these activities, discovering early that he had perfect pitch, and, by the age of eight, he was playing the organ in the magnificent baroque basilica of Ottobeuren. He enrolled simultaneously in 1914 at the Academy of Music in Augsburg to study piano and organ, and at the local gymnasium or high school. During this period, Jochum discovered the music of Bach, and in 1918, after playing through a vocal score of Tristan und Isolde given to him by a friend, realized that his future life could only be as a musician. Having heard Bruno Walter conduct Tristan and Parsifal in Munich in 1920, two years later, Jochum enrolled in the Munich Academy of Music to study organ and composition. While at the Academy, he conducted a student orchestra, and so came to the notice of Siegmund von Hausegger, who invited him to join his conducting class.
After leaving the Academy in 1925, Jochum began work in the autumn of that year as a répétiteur at Monchen-Gladbach, both rehearsing the chorus and conducting the orchestra. The following year, he appeared with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and, as a result of the excellent reviews for this concert was invited to join the Kiel Opera, where he built up a repertoire of over fifty operas. For his final year at Kiel, 1928-1929, Jochum accepted the post of conductor of the orchestra concerts a Lubeck, in succession to Edwin Fischer: previous conductors of these concerts had included Abendroth and Furtwängler. On the recommendation of the latter, he was offered the post of first conductor at the National Theater Mannheim for the 1929-1930 season, remaining there for only one year before moving to Duisberg as chief conductor in 1930, where he stayed for two seasons until 1932. In the autumn of that, Jochum moved to Berlin as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which had been contracted for several for several concerts and recordings. While in Berlin, he was also invited to appear at the Städische Oper (the municipal opera) by its intendent Carl Ebert: in 1936, he conducted there the world premiere of Boris Gudonov in Mussorgsky’s original orchestration.
With the rise to power in 1933 of the National Socialist Party, and its impact upon the Berlin Radio as an important political institution, Jochum decided to leave Berlin, and, at the beginning of 1934, he accepted the offer to take over the opera and concerts in Hamburg from Karl Böhm and Karl Muck, respectively. Jochum remained in Hamburg until 1949 and was clear about the importance of this period in his career: “I stayed fifteen and a half years in Hamburg for the entire Nazi period, the war and the defeat. This was only possible because of the open mindedness that has always been a characteristic of this city. My personal and political opinions would have surely made it impossible for me to live in Berlin, Dresden, or Munich. This was also when I first felt musically mature”. During the period, he conducted music by Bartók, Hindemith, and Stravinsky. The music of these composers was banned elsewhere. Jochum also appeared abroad, conducting in Russia, Poland, and Greece. Most importantly, he held the position of principal guest conductor with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra between 1941 and 1944 and thus started a long and fruitful association with the orchestra. After the war in 1947, Jochum conducted for the first time the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, which was made of former players from the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague, and, in the following year, he shared a concert with Furtwängler in Hamburg.
As he approached his fiftieth birthday, Jochum gladly accepted an offer from Bavarian Radio to form and conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO), a new orchestra of international quality. While working for Bavarian Radio, he also appeared at regularly at the Munich State Opera, as guest conductor, and for the only time at the Vienna State Opera in 1950, conducting Bach’s St. John’s Passion. Jochum stayed remained chief conductor of the BRSO until 1960, and during the period, developed his activities extensively. He appeared for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival in the same year. He also took a chamber orchestra drawn from the BRSO to the summer music festival held in the beautiful baroque buildings of Würzburg, and conducted large-scale choral works by Monteverdi, Bach, and Verdi at the Ottobeuren. Together with BRSO, he enjoyed a major success in 1957 at the Edinburgh Festival and appeared in America for the first time during 1958.
Following the unexpected death of Eduard van Benheim in 1959, the Concertgebouw Orchestra invited Jochum to share its chief conductorship with the young Bernard Haitink. This he did between 1961 and 1963, and after Haitink took over the role of chief conductor, Jochum maintained contact with the orchestra as its principal guest conductor, a position that he retained until 1974. Throughout the 1960s, he continued to appear regularly in the USA, conducted in Japan, and he made frequent appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Deutsche Oper, also in Berlin. He made his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1968, and, between 1969 and 1973, was the chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.
The final years of Jochum’s career consisted predominantly of concerts, tours, and recordings with several orchestras, notable the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Dresden, Staatskapelle, Vienna Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic; in addition, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he was conductor laureate between 1975 and 1978. Jochum liked to tour; he would say that such work was basically a permanent rehearsal. His very last concerts took place in December 1986 with the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the beginning of 1987, with the Munich Philharmonic in Munich. He died peacefully in his sleep on March 26, 1987.
Taken from A-Z of Conductors, by David Patmore