A CHALLENGE TEMPTED HIM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 6

A CHALLENGE TEMPTED HIM

Eugene Goossens goes to Sydneu

UGENE GOOSSENS, the conductor, son of Eugene Goossens, the conductor, and grandson of Eugene Goossens, the conductor (also brother of Leon, the oboe player, and Marie and Sidonie, the harpists), landed in Auckland on a fine morning last week with two days to go before the concert he gave in the Auckland Town Hall (and over 1YA) with the National Orchestra of the NZBS. With his wife, who is an American, he had beén on board the motor vessel Suva for a month, with ten other passengers and a huge cargo of timber from Canada. We climbed on board the Suva out in the stream, and managed to shake hands with Sydney’s new conductor on a narrow strip of deck before slithering winch-cables and scurrying Chinese seamen persuaded us we'd beter get out of the way. Later, when he was settling down in his hotel room, we gathered he had been very glad to be on that listing timber-boat. "It was a marvellous rest; if I’d flown, I'd have had no rest and no sea air," he said. "I’d had a very tough season with the Cincinatti." Goos_ens has been conductor of the Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra for 16 years-and has been in America for 25 years. Now, at 54, he is going to Sydney to. be’ Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Director of the New South Wales Conserva-orium, which he regards as a challenging opportunity. His initial term is three years. If it is as fruitful as the hopes it will be, he expects to spend the re:t of his life there, with trips abroad for conducting in Europe and America from time to time. He and his wife decided when they were in Sydney a year ago that they were "simply crazy about the place as a city." Relearning the Tongue "I’m a Cockney," is Goossens’s answer if you ask him where he was born. His voice is still an Englishman’s voice efter 25 years in America, but before we had been talking to him very long he remembered one word he will have to learn again for Au_tralia. Speaking of his strenuous final season with the Cincinatti Orchestra, he said, "They have these very heavy schedules of one-night stands-or shedules and as I suppose I shall have to say now. His grandfather Eugene was born at Bruges and died in Liverpool in 1906, having. conducted the Carl Rosa Opera Company in England in its palmiest days. His father (Eugene again) was born in France, ‘and also conducted the Carl Resa Company. (He is 80 now, and still living in England). And his mother was the daughter of T. Aynsley Cook, one of the leading operatic basses of his day. The third Eugene is tall, with dark hair turning grey, i; what Americans call "tweedy," very easy to meet and talk to, ‘and travels with a colour-camera, which he turns on to ships, flying boats, and other colourful objects, while you talk. He doesn’t smoke. ‘He was born in London, and studied music -at Bruges, Liverpool, and the Royal College in London. He made his neme’ first as a violinist, and was well under way as a conductor by 1916. He had some connection with the Carl Rosa

Company, so there were some musicians in it. who had played under three generations of Goossens, Eugene. Then in 1923 he became conducior of the Symphony Orchestra at Rochester, N.Y., and later went to Cincinatti. He has composed two operas (Judith, 1929, and Don Juan, 1937, both to libre fos by Arnold Bennett) and gave the premiére of his Second Symphony in London last year. Before that, he had been conducting in Australia under contract to the ABC, and the proposal to offer him the dual appoin:ment originated then. He went from Australia to London, taking with him, as our readers may remember, the score of q ballet-suite Corroboree, by John Antill, an Australian. composer. The work. was a great success in London and, Goossens says, still more so in America. After London, he went to Belgium; then he returned to America and con, duc.ed the Cincinatti Orchestra in an arduous tour of the southern and western States of America, took a few weeks in New York, and then boarded the Suva. In England Now "English rehearsals are pitiable," he told us, when we were on the subject of Corroboree. "They’re up against it for money, and only the BBC Orchestra can afford really adequa‘e rehearsal-time. But that’s not a criticism of them-they achieve miracles. The British string player has always been renowned for his slick work in an orchestra. His reading is superb. The London Symphony Orchestra, for instance, did Corroboree in one rehearsal, and i.’s.a tricky work. "But it’s a lamentable condi.ion, A conductor is harassed when he has to rush a work through and can’t feel he’s doing the composer justice. It’s all to their credit that they do achieve miracles; but that doesn’t condone the conditions. If orchestrasscould be treated

as Civic assets, and subsidised, then it would be. all right. And I honestly believe a community can’t even begin to call itself-I hate the word---cultured, if it hasn’t an orchestra to bless itself with." In Sydney, Goossens wants to make his programmes "a nice mixture of classical, romantic and contemporary music, without any stress on one class in particular. "The Sydney orchestra could be one of the first half-dozen in the world, and I hope to make it so-given time. It will take time. I will need to introduce new material and drop some, but one doesn’t do these things precipitateiy, That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to take a direct stand, though. However, after what they did last year, I’m convinced that a great deal can be done with them. I asked them if they had done Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. They hadn’t. But do you know, they did it in three threehour rehear:als-a most exacting work, as you probably know." New Horizons We asked Goossens if he could say what it was that had tempted him away from America after 16 years. His answer is that after 16 years conducting one orchestra in America you are spending your time perpetuating an old tradition, not, creating a new one. "Naturally after 16 years one leaves a position like that wih a certain amount of regret, but when an orchestra is established (for fifty years, in this case) there is no challenge in the creative line. Your personnel remain the same, your programmes are substantially the same, and the ciiy’s horizon and tradition stays tae same. In Australia, there’s no doubt about it, the place is ripe for development. There’s a tremendous amount. to do. And it was that very duality about the pos ion thet I found so challenging.

Of course it will take a tremendous amount of energy. But it’s my idea that the Conservatorium can be a kind of feeder for the orchestra, I would like to make Sydney’s the pre-eminent school of music. That will need a very direct policy. I want to get hold of young play-ers-of which Australia is full — and build up a fine string school (I’m a violinist myself) and I want to see if I persuade the fathers of these young ers that there is a career in mu_ic just as there is in the bank, or anywhere else. Music’s not an apologetic thing, but a vital thing-and honourable, and distinguished. I’ve no time at all for the down-at-heel musician who doesn’t acknowledge the dignity of his profession, And then the other thing that appealed to me enormously was the climate, and the physical attraction of Australia. Both my wife and I felt that very strongly last year, and that made us decide." "What about opera in Australia?" "Oh yes-most certainly. They’ve had one or two opera ventures, but I visualise the thing going in full swing. I think it’s not too optimis:ic to hope for a combined opera-house and concert-hall in one. If I do achieve anything in Australia, I hope it will be along these lines. The place is automatically an opera country, because they produce all these (continued on next page)

As we go to press, Auckland is entering a period during which it will hear four different conductors and two different orchestras within nine days. Auckland has just lately heard the National Orchestra of the NZBS for the first time, under Andersen Tyrer, and on Friday, June 20, the orchestra will play under Eugene Goossens in the evening, after a schools concert conducted by Mr. Tyrer in the afternoon. A week loter (Friday, June 27), the orchestra will be conducted by Warwick Braithwaite. And on the following evening (Saturday, June 28), Aucklanders will go to their Town Hall again for the first concert in New Zealand by the Boyd Neel String Orchestra. A portion of this concert, and the whole of the other concerts, will be broadcast by 1YA.

(continued from previous page) fine singers, who go away-from Australia. Sydney is cfammed with good singers. I’m hoping in due course for a big combined choral and orchestral fes-ival each year so that we can do the massive things, and then out of all that activity naturally I’d hope for opera." Music in America "And what’s. your feeling about American music now that you've left af.er 25 years?" "T think the Americans are doing some very fine work. Aaron Copland, and Walter Piston, I think I-like best. And then Roy Harris and William Schuman, I think they’re all important. Roy Harris is very much music-of-the-plains, you know, but very vital." "What ..about English -music -in America-are they listening to Benjamin ‘Britten there?" "Oh ye I've done several of Benje’s works. I did the interludes from Peter Grimes last year. And they've had the opera itself, and the second one, The Rape of Lucrece. Actually I’ve done nothing but ho .-gospel British music in America for 25 years. If I didn’t, who else would, was how I felt about it. It. was an uphill job at.times. Even Elgar’ s symphonies, you'd have thought would be accepted by now, but ‘they were | never snapped up." . We left Eugene Goossens as NGnterels from the dailies made their approach. : "Ah, gentlemen," he said; striding towards them with outstretched, hand. Phenol" It’s easy to see what Antraiié likes this conductor. He is an agreele, urbane citizen who will. go down with the administrators, the pre-s, and the public. Australians have experienced conductor-bite, and the administrators of the public purses which have bought Goossens for £5,000 a year will feel comfortable with a man who has a reputation for doing first-rate work with the modern orches.ra, but at the same time ‘has an equable temperament that permits him to get his results by being, in his own words, "direct," rather than "nrecipitate.’"

Staff Reporter.