Reginald Goodall

I first became aware of Reginald Goodall as the first conductor of 'Peter Grimes' of course. Then his name used to appear on all Covent Garden programmes as 'Conductor' listed below 'Music Director' and 'General Administrator,' Despite this, he rarely actually conducted anything so he was something of an unknown quantity.

When Sadlers Wells Opera decided to mount 'The Mastersingers of Nuremberg' with Goodall in 1967 it became clear that here was a truly great Wagner conductor. If you don't believe this there is a recording to prove it. I have never been a fan of 'Meistersinger' but when conducted like this, I am.

The rest as they say is history. Goodall's performances of the Ring, Parsifal, Tristan and Fidelio at the ENO, WNO and Covent Garden plus some concerts followed. 

Goodall was a shy man. I love the story about Goodall and Carlos Kleiber meeting in the street. Goodall relates their exchange as follows;

CK. 'Ah, Herr Goodall, your Ring is so.......'

RG. 'No, no I don't think so....' [but he seemed to think it was].

We used to repersent the conductor James Judd who had struck up a friendship with Goodall. One day he called me to say Goodall was looking for an opportunity to conduct 'Tristan' because Covent Garden had invited him to do it and although he had worked on every 'Tristan' production there since the war as well as on the EMI recording with Furtwangler he had never conducted the opera from A - Z. He said he needed to do that somewhere out of the limelight, maybe in a small German house before he came to conduct it at the Royal Opera House.

That is actually quite a tall order. Firstly small houses even in Germany don't usually do 'Tristan.' Secondly, when they do it is usually the GMD who conducts and third, did anyone know him  in Germany?

By a miracle, a conductor and Musical Director called Matthias Kuntzch in Luebeck not only knew Goodall but had some performances of 'Tristan' in his house that he couldn't do. Kuntzch said he couldn't offer more than a single rehearsal with orchestra but Goodall said he would do it just to get that A-Z under his belt.

Being a serious man, Goodall told me he would need to go to Luebeck to attend a performance to see how they did it before going there for his rehearsal and performances (I think there were two planned). He needed to do this because he wouldn't have been able to change much during the rehearsal.

I therefore organised his trip and drove him to the airport for this exploratory visit. When he returned I picked him up and of course we discussed what had transpired. He was in a depressed mood. He said the performance had been totally unmusical and there had been only about 200 people in the audience. He added, I remember, a question as to what would you expect when the performance was so bad?' 

He did mention what a wonderful time he had had being back in Germany and how much better the German food was that English food etc. I was put in mind of his love of all things German resulting in his joining the British Union of Fascists on the day of the Dunkirk evacuation. I must add that almost every artist I have ever represented had some bee in their bonnets and I was always philosophical about this saying that as long as they were musicians and not politicians that didn't really matter. 

The time soon came for him to return to Luebeck for his actual engagement. Again I took him to Heathrow. The next day in the afternoon I received a call from Mr. Kuntzch to say that Mr. Goodall was on his way back to London. The orchestra had not been able to follow him and the rehearsal had had to be abandoned.

When I met him at the airport Goodall kept repeating 'I've let you down.' From what I could gather, it had been impossible for him to replicate the unmusical conducting the orchestra was used to. I imagined him trying to conjour the first note of the prelude out of the ether with some kind of imprecise movement of the baton and the orchestra not understanding anything.

Far from feeling let down, this whole episode only increased my admiration of him as an artist; he was incapable of conducting in an unmusical way even when he wanted to.

The planned Covent Garden performances of  'Tristan' never took place anyway but he was of course to do it with Welsh National Opera thanks to Brian McMaster who gave him the rehearsals he needed. There is a recording to prove his worth in that opera. Every time I bumped in to Goodall after that he said  'I let you down.'

There were two more contacts with Goodall. The first was when Stockhausen had been invited to conduct a programme of his music with the London Sinfonietta to be followed by a European tour. Working with Stockhausen was not difficult as long as you gave him what he required. These requirements were laid out in a crystal clear manner. They were demanding however and dependant on total fidelity to whatever had been agreed. 

So we found ourselves on a cliff-edge concerning the attendance of one trombonist at one rehearsal. the musician in question, David Purser, was engaged for a rehearsal for 'The Ring' with Reginald Goodall on the relevant afternoon. A request was made for him to be released to attend the rehearsal with Stockhausen. This was refused. In the end, a personal approach to Goodall was made. I was not there but apparently Goodall said - without irony -  'All right, but who will conduct 'The Ring?'

That was for me another proof of his integrity. I still don't know to this day what happened next but all I know is that the matter resolved somehow and both the 'Ring' and the Stockhausen tour went ahead.

Fast-forward 50 years, I met David Purser at Harry Birtwistle's memorial weekend organised by Adrian Brendel at Plush and asked him what had happened. To my amazement David Purser had been totally unaware of the titanic struggle right up to that moment (2022).

My last contact with Sir Reginald as he now was came at the end of his career in what may have been his last concert but one. One of the London music colleges wanted to invite him to conduct a concert at the Barbican with Bruckner's 8th Symphony and Wagner's 'Prelude and Liebestod' from 'Tristan' in the first half with Jane Eaglen. Eaglen had lost a lot of weight of which Goodall disapproved. He said she was destined to sing the big Wagnerian roles and that of course was what she did. I think he was very taken with her and no doubt helped her on her way.

The concert was a marvellous success. Goodall's method of working with each individual soloist, front desk and section, building up the orchestra brick by brick suited the college band perfectly.

Other memories? He used to take his lunch at a place down the hill from Covent Garden called the 'Gaiety Restaurant,' the least gay place imaginable. He had been married but after his wife died he used to take his dinners at Maisie Aldrich's flat in Addison Gardens, Kensington. He had a house in Barham Kent but he may have stayed with Maisie when in town. They had known eachother since the 1930s when Maisie had formed the Wessex Philharmonic Orchestra out of the remnants of the disbanded Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra and invited Goodall to be their conductor. She was a lovely person as was he despite the fascism and holocaust denial if you can imagine that..