Career summary

Bertha Jahn studied initially with the conductor Bernhard Jahn. Schenker accepted her as a pupil on April 3, 1907, and she returned with a request for further study in the October. She had previously studied with Theodor Leschetizky, later becoming his assistant, and also with Artur Schnabel. She was already playing chamber music evenings in the Bösendorfer Recital Hall in Vienna by 1905, and her career as a solo recitalist and performer in chamber ensembles and with orchestras developed across Austria, German, France, and Spain in the following years. She taught piano at the Akademie/Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst between 1927 and 1938, losing her post as a consequence of the annexation of Austria by the National Socialists. She emigrated to the USA in 1939, from the summer of which she was on the faculty of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts until her death in 1942. A Jahn-Beer Scholarship was set up in her memory at the School, for pianists seeking a career as a concert soloist.

Jahn-Beer and Schenker

Jahn-Beer was a pupil of Schenker’s from April 3, 1907 for an undetermined number of months. Much later, he reports in his diary having heard her on Radio Wien, on May 20, 1925 playing ballades by Brahms and Chopin (“rather leisurely, swollen”), and on May 30, 1929 the Beethoven G major violin sonata Op. 96.

Sources:

Contributor