Eugen Jochum - Central Website (Revised)

Introduction

For those who have never been able to attend a concert or opera performance conducted by Eugen Jochum, a Film, Video or DVD is a welcome possibility to study the conducting style of Eugen Jochum.
The first systematic listing of Video's is found in the eminent and detailed Tahra discography included in the Eugen Jochum Centenary Edition. The list is expanded here with a few items and some annotations.

Film

1. Stanford university (USA) has a small collection of video's with Eugen Jochum conducting. These are very valuable pre-war recordings, derived from film material. These items are the oldest films of Eugen Jochum.

The last item is available on Youtube (please follow the link)! The photo's below are from this 1935 film which, alas, provides also many references to that most unfortunate period in German history.

2. In the private collection of Mrs. Veronica Jochum-von Moltke, there exists a film of a concert performed for Pope Pius XII containing the following items:

In 1962, another concert-performance for the Pope was planned but due to illness, the pope could not attend. The concert was broadcasted by RAI and put on LP afterwards (an extremely rare item, by the way). I do not know if this concert was filmed also.

3. The archives from the Dutch broadcasting organizations probably have several films in their archives, featuring Eugen Jochum. One fragment is from the start of the 1962 journey of the Concertgebouworkest to Japan. This fragment is on-line: Concertgebouw naar Japan (external link).

Another fragment is taken from a concert for 9000 attendees June 16, 1961. It contains the closing parts of Beethoven's Leonore III Ouverture with the Concertgebouworkest in the RAI-Building in Amsterdam. This part is also available on-line: Leonore III in the RAI in Amsterdam (external link).

Probably, many more recordings exist in the archives, unfortunately not accessable to the general public.

Video

Video's with Eugen Jochum were never available commercially, at least I am not aware of any releases.
In my private collection, I have a number of Video's recorded from Dutch and German broadcasts.

Some annotations to the above list:
=> Part of the portrait by Ottokar Runze is available on youtube (please follow the link).
=> The violinkonzert with Frank-Peter Zimmermann has not been released on CD, but other Jochum recordings of this work exist. The same goes for the Brahms 4 from Dresden.
=> The Mozart Symphony KV Anh 223 (19a) has never been recorded (or released) in any other way by Eugen Jochum. The Mozart recordings with the Bamberger in general show Eugen Jochum as a happy man: happy that he can conduct Mozart. In the portrait-film by Ottokar Runze he himself says about Mozart:

"Je alter ich wird desto teurer würd er mir. Ich kann vieles an sonstige gute Musik dafür lassen, wenn ich nur genug Mozart mache."

Laser Disc

There exists a Japanese release on a Laser Disc of a performance of Bruckner 9 from a concert given March 25, 1984. Eugen Jochum conducts the RSO Berlin in Bruckner's 9th Symphony in the Berliner Philharmonie. The Tahra list dates this recording to december 18, 1983, together with the Mozart violinkonzert KV 218 (see paragraph above).
This recording is probably identical with the Bruckner 9 that I have in my collection of video's (mentioned above), although I have not been able to verify this. The photograph at the top of this page is captured from that video (it is the minute before the large adagio of Bruckners last symphony begins: Eugen Jochum takes off his glasses, closes his eyes for a few seconds, concentrates, puts his glasses on again and then solemly starts conducting).

The Laser Disc format has never received a warm welcome and Laser disc players are seldomly found nowadays. Due to the DVD revolution, it has really become obsolete. The laserdisc with Bruckner 9 conducted by Eugen Jochum is only available second-hand and often at ridiculously high prices ($100 and more). For a disc that can hardly be played anywhere, this cannot be considered an invitation to buying for a fair price.

Note: a concert of this date is not in the list of concerts (in the Eugen Jochum Buch Verein, see literature list) but that is no concluding evidence as:
- Some other documented concerts are known to be missing (see the external Leonore Link of June 16, 1961 above).
- At least one concert is listed that cannot have taken place (Concertgebouw September 2, 1986, because a concert was given by the "Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest", conducted by Lev Markiz and Anton Kersjes).
- The concert of Oct. 29, 1980 in Amsterdam is listed with question marks but it actually took place (I attended it myself).
- Very few concerts are listed for 1984 (but then this may have been caused by the death of his beloved wife Maria Jochum-Montz).
The "Konzertlist" is fully based on notes about performances made by Eugen Jochum himself in his scores. Therefore we must assume that these notes do not cover 100% of the concerts, or may contain errors. When one is considering the enormous span of years (a 60-year career!), the occurrence of small errors is hardly surprising.

DVD

The DVD as a medium provides us with good to perfect quality recordings. This has as a side effect that a large number of productions have been released. Among these are now three commercially available DVD's with Eugen Jochum. The quality of these DVD's differ markedly, however. Both discs have a good audio quality.

The Bruckner 7 and Wagner Tristan-excerpts recordings on EMI are a bit dissapointing as to the video quality, probably caused by the colouring of the original French video. The EMI disc itself obviously has been very carefully prepared (with a nice DVD-Rom booklet on the Disc) and the mpeg coding is optimal: no artifacts whatsoever are visible. A recommended DVD, widely available.

The performance of the works is very emotional, leaving a real imprint on the listener.
The concerts were recorded on February 6, 1980 in Paris.
A bonus is the (BW) Ouvertüre from Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" recorded in 1964.

The Bruckner 8 with the Bamberger has been released by Altus in Japan. As to the quality: it has the opposite characteristics when compared to the EMI DVD. The Altus DVD uses very good originals, but has poor mpeg coding: artifacts are visible everywhere.

The Adagio is sweeping one away into the era of Romanticism: recommended!
This DVD is currently obtainable only via internet. The recording was made in Tokyo by Japanese Television on September 2, 1982.

The parts in which Eugen Jochum accompagnies Teresa Berganza are in BW, but both audio and sound transfers obviously have been prepared very carefully.

The real surprise is the repertoire: Mozart ("Le Nozze di Figaro" and KV 578) as well as Rossini ("La Cenerentola"). This is the only Rossini-recording with Eugen Jochum. The recordings were made in 1964.

"Lost" items

Several more recordings were made. It is not known to me if these recordings still exist, as some broadcasting companies have a habit of cleaning tapes after an indefinite number of years. The following data are derived from the Tahra discography (page 41-43) with one exception: Bruckner 5.