Reginald Goodall

Sir Reginald Goodall ( born July 13, 1901 in Lincoln; † 5 May 1990 in London ) was an important, especially for his interpretations of Wagner- estimated English conductor.

Life

Reginald Goodall was born in 1901 as son of the piano teacher, organist and choir director Albert Edward Goodall and his wife Adelaide ( née Jones) in Lincoln. His childhood was spent largely in Canada. After his return to England he studied from 1925 piano, organ and conducting at the Royal College of Music in London, where he met, among others, Benjamin Britten. After his education he worked as a cantor at the Church of St. Alban the Martyr in London's High Holborn. With the local boys' choir he led on, among other sacred works by Anton Bruckner, partly as an English premiere. During the Second World War he was in charge, with a short interruption by military service, the Wessex Philharmonic Orchestra, which was founded by him, no longer existing touring orchestra, with whom he performed a wide variety of classical orchestral literature as well as works by contemporary British composers.

A wider public Goodall became known only after the Second World War, when he on the London Sadler's Wells Opera, the world premiere of Britten's Peter Grimes conducted in 1945. Portions of this production were recorded by the BBC. After the sensational success of Britten's first opera Goodall was engaged as conductor and accompanist at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. In the 1940s and 1950s, he conducted a series of repertory performances and assisted renowned conductors such as Karl Rankl, Thomas Beecham and Rudolf Kempe. He also assisted Erich Kleiber in the preparation of the New England premiere of Berg's Wozzeck. Travel to Germany enabled him contacts with Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss and Hans Knappertsbusch that characterized his later Wagner interpretations shall prevail.

In 1962 Georg Solti was music director at the Royal Opera House. Because although he appreciated Goodall as a coach, but not as conductors, Goodall conducted from then on no more performances. He instead took more assistants, especially in the aged Otto Klemperer, whose rehearsals he took over for the most part.

Although the late 1960s, all suggesting that Goodall Dirigientenkarriere was finished, he received in 1967, an offer of the Sadler 's Wells Opera, a production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger of Nuremberg to conduct, in English. The already 66 -year-old conductor took the opportunity to rehearse an opera on his own terms for the first time, and scored with the " Meistersinger " a sensational success. As a result, it came at the English National Opera in a new production of the entire Ring of the Nibelung in the English language, which earned Goodall great acceptance with audiences and critics, and their records recording was spread worldwide. This was followed by performances of Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal at Covent Garden. Towards the end of his life ( from 1979), he conducted more Wagner performances at the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff. This resulted in two German -language recordings of " Tristan and Isolde " and " Parsifal ", which is also found worldwide attention.

Goodall conducted into old age at the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera. Also in the 1970s there were a few symphonic concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted late symphonies of Bruckner among others. His unusually shy and reserved nature and his enormous sample claims foiled a career outside the UK. Nevertheless, Goodall is now considered one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century.

• Conductor
• Born 1901
• Died in 1990
• Man