Richard Goldner

Richard Goldner (born June 23, 1908 in Krajowa , † September 27, 1991 in Sydney ) was a Romanian born, initially Austrian, then Australian violist , music teacher , inventor and founder of Musica Viva Australia.

Born in Romania, Richard Goldner moved with his parents to Vienna during the first year of his life. He received music lessons from the age of five, but initially studied architecture after high school. But soon he was taking lessons at the New Vienna Conservatory with Emanuel Scharfberg ( violin ) and Simon Pullman ( viola and chamber music ) and gave up studying architecture. He developed a close friendship with Simon Pullman, who had a decisive influence on his musical development.

In the 1930s Goldner played in various ensembles, including the Vienna Chamber Orchestra , the Vienna Concert Orchestra, the Pullman Orchestra and, most recently, Hermann Scherchen's Musica Viva Orchestra.

After the “ Anschluss ” of Austria in March 1938, as a Jew , he was forced to emigrate and found a host country in Australia. In Sydney, however, Goldner did not initially succeed in making a living as a musician. But he was successful - together with his brother - in the production of leather accessories and costume jewelry. The invention and production of a special zipper for army purposes after Australia entered the war finally secured his further musical ventures.

When Richard Goldner found out about the death of his former teacher and friend Simon Pullman in the Treblinka concentration camp , he founded a chamber music ensemble in his honor in 1945. In its name, Richard Goldner's Sydney Musica Viva, there was also a reference to Hermann Scherchen's Vienna Orchestra. With a smaller ensemble, the Sydney Musica Viva String Quartet, Goldner toured Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand from 1947 on and founded his own company to manage it.

In 1950 he withdrew from the string quartet, which was finally dissolved in 1951. But a few years later the Musica Viva Society found its revival and subsequently developed into a large network of organizers for chamber music concerts with a formative influence on the music scene in Australia. Goldner himself was initially active, among other things, as an initiator and organizer of music festivals, but turned to teaching from the early 1960s.

First he was appointed to teach violin and viola at the New South Wales State Conservatory in Sydney. In 1966 he moved to the USA together with Charmian Gadd, a former student whom he married in 1970. Here both settled in Pittsburgh and took up teaching positions at the Duquesne School of Music. After more years of teaching at Western Washington University (from 1978), Goldner finally returned to Sydney in 1981.

In the last years of his life he devoted himself to his hobby as an inventor in addition to private music lessons and worked on a book on teaching methods for string instruments as well as on his (unpublished) autobiography. Richard Goldner died in 1991 at the age of 83 as a recognized pioneer who played a key role in bringing chamber music to life in the public concert sector in Australia.

Awards

• Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st Class (1970)

literature

• Ann Atkinson, Linsay Night, Margaret McPhee: The Dictionary of Performing Arts in Australia , Vol. 1: Theater, Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 2: Opera, Dance and Music. Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards 1996.
• Josef Reitler : 25 years of the New Vienna Conservatory 1909-1934 . New Vienna Conservatory, Vienna 1934.
• Michael Shmith, David Colville (eds.): Musica Viva Australia. The First Fifty Years . Playbill Pty. Ltd., Sydney 1996.
• Suzanne Baker: How a Zipper Came to Make Fine Music . In: Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, Vol. XIX / 2, Melbourne 2008, pp. 201-207.
• Shirli Gilbert: Music in the Holocaust. Confronting life in the Nazi ghettos and camps . Clarendon Press, Oxford 2005.

Web links

• Richard Goldner in the Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians from the Nazi Era (LexM)
• Musica Viva Australia website