Glendon Frank:
Remembering Hilda Jonas
Harpsichordist, pianist, teacher, and, most importantly, beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Hilda Jonas passed away peacefully at age 101 in her San Francisco home on September 12, 2014, after a long and productive life devoted to music, family, and community. Her husband Gerald preceded her in death in 2007.
Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1913, Hilda studied at the Cologne Conservatory but was dismissed in 1933 because she was Jewish. She subsequently completed her music degree at the Gumpert Conservatory in Düsseldorf, during which time she traveled to Switzerland to study piano with Rudolph Serkin, and to France to study harpsichord with Wanda Landowska. At Hilda’s death, she was one of the last remaining students of Madame Landowska.
The Jonases fled Nazi persecution in Germany in 1938 with their 1937 Walter Ebeloe harpsichord in tow, first traveling to Australia, but later continuing on to Hawaii. Hilda’s career flourished there, with performances as soloist with the Honolulu Symphony, and with radio broadcasts for the “Voice of Hawaii.” After three and a half years in the islands, the Jonas family left in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Settled in Cincinnati, Hilda continued her career as artist and teacher, playing as harpsichord soloist with the Cincinnati and Cleveland Orchestras, giving recitals in New York, and organizing her concert tours to Austria, France, Italy, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia.
In 1975, the Jonases moved to San Francisco, where Hilda gave many recitals at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Her final program there (at the age of 86) was a performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. In 2010, Hilda donated her cherished Ebeloe harpsichord to St. Mary’s.
While living in San Francisco, Madame Jonas recorded four compact discs, mainly devoted to the music of Bach, and was actively involved in her community, giving many concerts in community centers, museums, colleges and universities, churches, synagogues, and radio stations along the California coast.
As a teacher, Hilda took special interest in the lives and successes of her students. Always the optimist, she will be remembered as a kind, patient, and generous mentor and friend, an inspiration to all who knew and loved her.
Hilda Jonas is survived by her daughters Susanne Jonas and Linda Jonas Schroeder, two granddaughters, a grandson, and three great-grandsons. Hilda was definitely one-of-a-kind; she will be greatly missed.
Glendon Frank studied harpsichord with Dr. Larry Palmer at Southern Methodist University. A long-time resident of San Francisco, he currently serves as ceremonial organist for Arlington National Cemetery and director of music for the Military Catholic Community at Fort Myer, Virginia.
Larry Palmer:
A Sonic Postscript
Hilda Jonas’s 1977 vinyl disc Listen Rebecca, the Harpsichord Sounds (Sanjo-Music, San Francisco) comprises slightly more than half an hour of her own poetry combined with music specifically chosen to interest the artist’s granddaughter. Performing on her two-manual Eric Herz instrument, Ms. Jonas played a wide-ranging selection of pictorial music, preceding each composition with a poem and an announcement of each title and composer. Thus it is possible for today’s listener to experience both Jonas’s voice and the colorful style of playing espoused by Wanda Landowska’s students: truly a sonic postcard from a vanished era.
The record’s liner notes include a printed text of the spoken words, introducing them with these lines: “Here is a record to behold, Words and music, for young and old. Like birds, bells, drums, and lute, Nature’s songs, violin and flute.”
The musical program was drawn primarily from the Baroque repertoire (English translations are by Ms. Jonas): Le Rappel des Oiseaux (The Birds Call), Le Tambourin, and Les Sauvages (The Wild Dancers)—Jean-Philippe Rameau; Le Coucou—Louis-Claude Daquin; Les Ombres Errantes (Lost Shadows)—François Couperin; Air with Variations, E Major (“The Harmonious Blacksmith”)—George Frideric Handel; Sonata in A (Bells) and Sonata in E (Cortège)—Domenico Scarlatti; Sonata in G Minor—Antonio Gaetano Pampani. Additionally there are three short excursions into the 20th-century repertory: a lovely Pastorale by the German/Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984), and two vignettes, Rainy Day and Dreams from Enfantines by Ernest Bloch (1880–1959).
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