Reginald Goodall

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 20:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is a conductor, now recognized as one of the great Wagner conductors, Reginald Goodall.

Presenter0:38

Now, because it's Desert Island Discs, we've asked you to choose eight records. Would you rather choose eight scores?

Speaker 30:46

Yes, I would prefer the hapless scores.

Presenter0:48

From what point of view? I would have the whole works then rather than just one. Oh, yes, well you would indeed. And of course you'd have your own mental interpretations of them.

Presenter0:58

Did we have any kind of

Presenter1:00

Plan in mind when you chose your eight record.

Presenter1:03

I tried to start with the first implication of uh tonal music, key music, that uh was the um is monadic, the plain song.

Presenter1:13

Nevertheless, there are harmonic implications behind it, and then I carried through as far as the end of the Romantic period, but of course I haven't uh included the atonal music of the Schumpeau. So in a way it's a kind of personal musical history. Yes. And will you tell us in more detail how you start? With the um.

Reginald Goodall1:31

With

Presenter1:33

Plain song of Selei monks sing in Easter Alleluia

Reginald Goodall2:19

God's the answer

Speaker 22:19

What is it?

Presenter2:27

Yo.

Presenter2:36

An Easter Alleluia sung by the monks of the Abbey of Salem for the Sunday after Easter, the Dimonche de Cassimodo, it says here.

Presenter2:46

Post Dies octo.

Presenter2:49

Now, mister Kodo

Presenter2:50

You were born in Lincoln, is that right? Yes. And your father was a professional musician. Yes.

Presenter2:56

Were you put to music, or did you take to music?

Reginald Goodall3:00

I think

Presenter3:02

Well, I had piano lessons when I was four or five. Did your father teach you? Yes. And then you went to the choir school of Lincoln Cathedral. And then to the Royal College of Music. What were your subjects? Violin.

Reginald Goodall3:11

Uh

Speaker 33:11

The Editor

Reginald Goodall3:11

Uh

Presenter3:16

Piano.

Presenter3:18

Anthuria.

Presenter3:19

Who were your musical idols as a boy? Well, as a conductor for Bangladesh. Did you see him as a youngster? Yes, yeah. In London here in nineteen twenty seven. While a student, were you were you doing any any paid jobs to to help things along with with your fees? Yes, I was um a choir master at a church, Anglo-Catholic church in Hoban, where they had um on feast days the masses of Schubert and Mozart. Yeah. I had a small orchestra which I conducted.

Speaker 33:30

By the side of the

Presenter3:53

Did you ever have to do any of the things like um a spell in a cafe orchestra or any anything like that that students have to do?

Presenter4:02

Yes, I did. Before before I went there I played in a cinema in the evenings. Where was that? In Chelsea, a small cinema. Mostly improvising at the piano, was it? Yes, yes. No, playing for music.

Reginald Goodall4:11

Yeah.

Presenter4:14

Let's have your second record. What will that be? Forty eight preludes and fugues.

Presenter4:19

On the piano or the harpsichord? On the piano.

Presenter4:24

Which one shall we play now?

Presenter4:26

Should we start with the first one? The first one in C.

Presenter5:30

The Bach Forty Eight Perludes and Fugues, Number One from Book One in C played by Svertislav Richter.

Presenter5:39

In the early thirties you began to spend several months of the year in in Munich and Vienna. You became especially fascinated by German music. Yes. Did you sit in at Opera House rehearsals? Yes, in Munich.

Presenter5:52

Who was conducting? Well, Cannapis Bush and the Times, I think, Clements Gross. Had you studied conducting yourself? I had b been in the conducting class at college. I did it because I had to conduct the choir and orchestra at this church. Was that the church that you afterwards went back to, St Albans and Hoban? N and yes, I didn't go back to it. I was there all the time. You stayed there all the time?

Reginald Goodall6:15

You stayed there all the time.

Presenter6:17

It was a a very enterprising church, I believe, as far as music was concerned.

Reginald Goodall6:20

At least as far as music was concerned.

Presenter6:23

New made it even more enterprising by taking Bruckner masses and and and things that were rather new to the congregation.

Reginald Goodall6:28

Yes.

Presenter6:33

What was your very first experience of opera conducting? In Vienna, about nineteen twenty seven or twenty eight, when I heard Franz Schalt conduct Fidelio and Camus Kross, Rosen Cavalier and Cosy Van Tutti and operas like that. When did you first conduct opera yourself?

Presenter6:52

I think about nineteen thirty six or thirty seven. Was that just across the road from Broadcasting House in Saint George's Hall? That yes, a semi-amateur opera company.

Reginald Goodall7:01

That's yes.

Reginald Goodall7:03

Yeah.

Presenter7:04

But you would a professional conductor.

Presenter7:07

Wh what were the works? Do you remember? Uh Carmen

Presenter7:10

Cavalieria Rusticana.

Presenter7:14

And you gave Sir Malcolm Sargent a hand at the Royal Choral Society? Well, I took the preliminary rehearsals which were necessary with the you went to work with Albert Coates at at Covent Garden. Yes. And you were doing a a great deal of coaching.

Reginald Goodall7:22

Uh

Speaker 37:23

Uh

Reginald Goodall7:23

Uh

Presenter7:30

I have been in um the Grand Season there wi with Beecham's company. Yes. And then I stayed on with the Albert Coates. Tell me about Albert Coates. What sort of man was he? Oh, tremendously enthusiastic man, very inspiring. I found him. Well, the war broke out.

Presenter7:49

Covent Garden closed and became a dance hall to somebody's eternal shame.

Presenter7:54

And we find you conducting the Wessex Philharmonic Orchestra. Now what was that? It was half of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, which had been disbanded, enlarged by several violinists and players from various cafes and other very good players. And then of course you were called into the army, so that was that. Yes. And it seems a a good point for us to break.

Presenter8:19

For your third record, what's that to be?

Presenter8:21

Uh Bachmas in B minor.

Presenter8:23

Bach, Mass and B minor. Who would you like to conduct it? Now he's a hero of yours, isn't he? A man you've worked with a great deal.

Reginald Goodall8:32

Yeah, so

Presenter8:32

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:33

Yeah.

Presenter8:34

Which part of the mass shall we hear?

Presenter8:36

May we play the curie at the opening of the word.

Presenter9:39

The opening of the Bach Mass in B minor, the Kyrie Liaison, Otto Klemperer conducting the new Philharmonia Orchestra and the B B C chorus.

Presenter9:49

Now, mister Goodold, the army didn't keep poo very long.

Presenter9:53

What did you do when you were demobilized?

Presenter9:56

Nothing. Well.

Presenter9:57

He was out of work for about eight eighteen months.

Presenter10:02

Well then the Saddler's Wells job came along, didn't it? Yes. They were reforming. I suppose after being closed for for all those years it was a question

Presenter10:12

Rather than reforming of starting again from scratch. Well, no, they they had been on tour and were on tour and I heard they needed a musician there. I telephoned Joan Cross and Lawrence Collingwood and they engaged me. You were conducting the regular repertory. Then you conducted the the first night of a new opera which proved to be something very special. Yeah, Pet Peter Grimes, eh? Peter Grimes, yes.

Speaker 310:35

Yeah.

Presenter10:38

Did you have an inkling of of how special it was while you were rehearsing it?

Presenter10:43

We thought it was a very fine work.

Speaker 310:43

It was a

Presenter10:45

Very inspired work. You had known Benjamin Britton before that? Oh yes, quite a long time. W what what had you worked with him on? Well, uh when he was at the college, I think about nineteen thirty one, he showed me a

Reginald Goodall10:49

Oh yeah.

Presenter10:58

te diem of his for strings often enough. We were the I'd like to perform it with the choir hat. We'd already supplied some singers for him for his work, A Boy Was Born. And we performed this little te dium at the Le Maire concerts.

Reginald Goodall11:10

Perfect.

Presenter11:14

Oh yes. And then when I was with the Wessex film I did the violin shut down violin.

Presenter11:20

And piano control and illumination.

Presenter11:23

Tell me what? So you were one of his early collaborators? Yes.

Presenter11:28

You later conducted two other operas of his, after Peter Grant.

Reginald Goodall11:32

Yeah.

Presenter11:35

Gloriana. Well, now after being at the Saddlers Worlds for a while you you moved over to Cotton Garden. Yes.

Presenter11:42

Was that your idea, or?

Presenter11:44

Well no, I was asked uh Karl Rankle, the music director, asked me to yes. He heard me conduct about eleven operas and rightly or wrongly asked me to go.

Reginald Goodall11:44

No.

Speaker 311:49

He heard me

Presenter11:54

to Cobben Garden as as a house conductor, but they gave you mostly the Italian repertory, didn't they?

Reginald Goodall12:00

Yeah.

Presenter12:01

Why was that? Why weren't you let loose on on on the German repertoi, which was Where Your Heart Lay?

Presenter12:07

I don't really know because I told them before I went there I I was a very bad Verdi conductor. Was it perhaps because Reenkel wanted to conduct a lot of them himself?

Presenter12:17

Well, I think he he as music director he should have conducted and and being an Austrian he perhaps that wasn't right as a house conductor. You have spent a lot of time in Germany, still you used to go every year.

Presenter12:30

Yes, before the war. And uh before the war I used to play for Reinolf von Waalik, a very fine leader who held master classes in Lieder. And that's why I went to stayed with him in Munich. When did you start going back to Germany after the war?

Reginald Goodall12:38

Damn me.

Presenter12:45

Well, of course in nineteen forty five, right at the end of the war, the whole Saddler's Wells company toured all the broken cities of Germany. And did you go with them? I had to go with them. Yes. That must have been a an awful experience seeing all that desolation. Yes, I didn't want to go, but apparently one of the conductors failed them or something. They telephoned me to but I started going then. Uh we went to Germany I think with the rape of Lucretia and then I went to the Bayreuth Festival when it opened in fifty one.

Reginald Goodall12:58

It does not have to be a little bit more.

Reginald Goodall13:04

Yeah.

Presenter13:14

It's time we had another record. What's number four?

Presenter13:16

The first cello suite in G major, unaccompanied cello suite, played by Casa. This is Bach again, of course. Yes. And which movement? The Saraban.

Presenter14:15

Casals playing the Sarah band from the Bach First Cello Suite.

Presenter14:21

In your years at Covent Garden as as house conductor, your talents weren't really stretched. You you weren't given many exciting opportunities there, were you? No, I think as a house conductor one shouldn't expect that. Knowing your enthusiasm, for example, for Wagner, I believe you did conduct a production of Master Singers and a few performances of Tan Huizer, but most of the Wagner you did was out of London on tour. Yes.

Presenter14:46

Would you say it was

Presenter14:48

nineteen sixty eight.

Presenter14:50

That was the big turning point for you, that new production of Master Singers at Saddlers Wells.

Presenter14:58

Yes, it was the first production which I had prepared wholly musically myself before I'd had to take over from other conductors at the Covent Garden. And this this was a great success, this particular one. Well, I think people liked it. It was a it was a very exciting time because Sadler's Wells Opera had moved down to the Coliseum.

Presenter15:19

And of course there was to be a new and grand ring cycle, and you were to take charge. That must have been a very daunting job. How long was it to take? How long were you given?

Presenter15:29

We took uh a year to do each one of the ring. So it was a four-year job? Yes. How do you feel about Wagner in English?

Presenter15:37

I think for people who don't understand Germany it helps them very much to understand what the ring is really about. It isn't just either music.

Presenter15:45

of poetry or text, it's the combination of the two.

Presenter15:50

Hmm.

Presenter15:51

And if one

Presenter15:52

Element is missing, you're only getting half the meaning of the word.

Speaker 315:55

Meaning.

Presenter15:57

In other words, it it it's a necessary substitute? I think so, yeah.

Presenter16:02

I felt with the audience understanding the text that it wasn't so much a performance as three of us together, the singers, the orchestra, and the public, all coming into the work. Who did the new translation? Andrew Porter. Well, we'll talk more about this ring cycle in a moment. Let's have another record first. Yes, maybe hear the end of the Ninth Symphony conducted by Philm Engler with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Fort Wangler, your early inspiration. Did you ever meet him and work with him? Oh, yes, yes. When? It would be 1947. Where was that? I was at Covent Garden when he conducted some concerts there. And I was introduced to him by a friend of his. Fort Wengler conducting the Beethoven Ninth.

Reginald Goodall16:34

Yeah.

Presenter17:47

The closing passage of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wilhelm Furtwängela with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter17:54

A recording made during the war, wasn't it, mister Goodwill, this one?

Reginald Goodall17:56

Go on this one.

Presenter17:57

Nineteen forty-two or thereabouts.

Presenter18:00

Right, we were talking about this ring cycle at the Coliseum.

Presenter18:05

How long does the ring last altogether? Seventeen hours, or more than that?

Presenter18:10

I think something like an awful lot depends rated on who's conducting it. Yes, indeed.

Presenter18:18

And it said that you have a slightly slower tempo, or set of tempi on the ring than most conductors. Wagner was fairly imprecise about.

Presenter18:30

His markings in the score, was he not? Yes, he gave up using metronome marks.

Presenter18:37

I know that you're a great Wagner student. Do you get many clues from the letters and the various biographies of his intentions? Yes, um very much.

Presenter18:49

Your own senses.

Presenter18:51

What you, in a way, what he wanted.

Presenter18:55

It must have been a tremendous coaching job with the singers, because they're not really Wagnerian singers, most of the Sattlers Wales people. No, but we had at that time John Barker on, who was a very great help in the very good staff at the Coliseum. One had every help from everybody there. And the two producers, Den Brian Shaw and John Blatchley, were very helpful. And there was to be a complete recording. That was the first complete one ever in English. I think it was, yes.

Reginald Goodall19:10

One

Presenter19:29

Was that made during rehearsals and performances? It was made during performances. Do you think that was a good idea? I I know it was essential from uh a point of view of expense. Would you rather have made it in a studio? No, I would prefer even with all the mistakes that you get naturally with a orchestra and singers and people that have not done it many times. You get that sense of immediacy. Yeah, yes. And a cough or two doesn't matter.

Reginald Goodall19:51

I've not done it many times.

Speaker 319:55

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter19:58

As listeners to Radio Three will be judging because well as you know, the complete cycle is being broadcast at the moment.

Presenter20:09

It's time we have another record. What shall we have now? Possible.

Presenter20:12

Oh, we're going to hear some Wagner now.

Presenter20:15

And which section of it? The Good Friday Music.

Reginald Goodall20:15

Would you

Presenter20:18

And what recording is this? It's the one, the Bayreuth recording, when it reopened, conducted by Kinapas Bush. When did it reopen?

Presenter20:28

In nineteen fifty one, July. Mhm. I think. Well, that must have been a great occasion reopening after the empty years of the war. Were you there in that season?

Speaker 320:33

Yeah.

Speaker 320:35

Yeah.

Speaker 320:37

Yeah.

Reginald Goodall20:43

On to lights.

Presenter20:54

A big teacher

Speaker 221:06

This is forgotten.

Speaker 321:09

Ponzi

Speaker 321:11

Lost.

Speaker 221:20

Oh perfect.

Speaker 321:33

Boss Man

Presenter21:37

An excerpt from the third act of Wagner's Passefau

Presenter21:41

The Festival Theatre Byright Production of 1951, with Wolfgang Wintgassen as Passifer.

Presenter21:49

Now your most recent success.

Presenter21:51

Recent achievement has been a performance of Tristan and Isolda by the Welsh Opera Company.

Presenter21:58

Well, that was a brand new production. How long did that take? Well, we had about two or three months, I think three months, preparing it. But I worked with the Singers and Orchestra before that, of course. Yes. And you played it in quite a few times in Moscow. And one performance, one

Speaker 322:13

Here

Presenter22:16

triumphant performance in London just a few weeks ago. Yes. What next? What's your next plan? Well, we're going to record that. Tristan is on next November.

Reginald Goodall22:23

Oh.

Presenter22:27

And that of course was in German.

Presenter22:29

That is in German. But we're doing a new production of Tristanisalda in English for the English National Opera Company at the Coliseum. When will that be?

Presenter22:39

I've been nineteen eighty one during August.

Presenter22:44

Now let's get back to the desert island situation, Mr. Goodall. What sort of castaway do you think you would be? Could you look after yourself in those circumstances? Oh no, it depends upon it. Have you ever done any fishing or anything useful like that? No, I do have lot of gardening. Well, that would be fine. That'd help you cultivate. Do you know anything about small boats?

Speaker 323:00

That'll help you.

Presenter23:04

No.

Presenter23:04

I think you had better stay where you are, don't try and escape, and muddle along as best you can.

Presenter23:10

And let's have record number seven.

Presenter23:13

The second subject was the first move to the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. Six, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Furbank.

Speaker 323:21

Football seems to get in the Tsaikovsky, the yearning.

Speaker 323:28

Pathos

Presenter24:20

Part of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. Six, the Patetique.

Presenter24:25

Furtwengler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter24:29

Which brings us now to your Law Streak, or what's that to be?

Presenter24:32

The afternoon of a fawn, Debussy. Why?

Presenter24:36

Because I think the Berlin Philharmonic was

Presenter24:39

Foncarion.

Speaker 324:41

Get the coldness and the heat of this work, and the way it's interpreted the icy cold, yet the heat of a hot, burning Grecian sun.

Presenter24:45

No.

Presenter25:47

The bass is La Prémédid en phone.

Presenter25:50

Herbert von Karian conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter25:55

If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Presenter26:00

The forty-eight parallels and fews of Bach and one luxury to take to your island.

Presenter26:06

A garden.

Presenter26:08

An English garden. An English garden. I know gardening is a great hobby of yours. Well, this uh presents our technicians with some problem, but I'm sure that with some form of solar refrigeration we can turn a piece of a desert island into a piece of an English garden. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare Paradise Lost, Milton. That shall be provided. And thank you, Reginald Goodall, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Presenter26:36

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Presenter26:41

Well, we've enjoyed it and thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 226:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.