Hannah Wald, a concert pianist who became a music teacher, died Thursday, March 2, in St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago of congestive heart failure. A Chicago resident, she was 89. Raising a family on the West Side, Ms. Wald’s parents thought their children should also study music. Ms. Wald was the only one with a true gift, said one of her brothers, David. “By the time I was old enough to know, I heard beautiful music playing,” David Wald said. “She was just a natural musical genius.” Ms. Wald won a scholarship to the Columbia School of Music and graduated at 18. David Wald remembered accompanying his sister to hear her play on a radio station. “She played a half-hour,” he said. “Everything was live then. They had no canned music.” Among the other highlights of her first career were performing with the NBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony, David Wald said. David Wald said his sister earned a master’s degree from Roosevelt University in the 1950s before teaching music at Lake View High School (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). She also gave private lessons. Ms. Wald also is survived by another brother, Sidney; and a sister, Esther Lerman. Services will be at 11:30 a.m. Monday at Waldheim Cemetery, the P.O.W. section, Gate 37, in Forest Park.
