Irène Joachim

Irène Joachim (13 March 1913 - 20 April 2001) was a French soprano, and later a vocal teacher.

Daughter of German officer Herman Joachim and French violinist Suzanne Chaigneau, and granddaughter of the violinist Joseph Joachim, she learnt violin and piano as a child. She was bilingual in German and French.

Just before the outbreak of the First World War she and her parents left Paris for Berlin, staying in a pension in the Lutherstrasse for the remainder of the war. Her father died of tuberculosis in 1917, and due to the hardships of life in the German capital Joachim was sent back to France in the autumn of 1918, living with an aunt before her mother returned in 1920.

Due to health problems and her mother’s professional life-style, Joachim was educated privately, firstly by Jeanne Favart. Afternoons were devoted to music studies : violin, piano and solfège.

As a child she heard musicians such as Emanuel Feuermann, Claire Croiza, Germaine Lubin, Marya Freund and the Capet Quartet. Through the social circle of Jean Gehret the 12-year-old Joachim went to plays and attended the last seasons of the Diaghilev Ballet. During the summer of 1926 and for several months in 1927 Irène accompanied her mother who undertook two visits as a teacher with the Yanker family in Chicago. This again brought the young Joachim into close contact with leading musicians, such as Thibaud, Tansman, Casals and Ravel. Back in France she stopped her violin studies but continued with the piano.

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