EUGENE GOOSSENS: CONDUCTOR OF THE FUTURE presented by Dennis D. Rooney

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections presents the following program from its 2013 ARSC Annual Conference at Marriott Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri on Friday May 17, 2013:
EUGENE GOOSSENS: CONDUCTOR OF THE FUTURE
presented by Dennis D. Rooney, Independent Researcher
2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Eugene Goossens’s death. During his lifetime, he was regarded among the leading younger British conductors. In 1921, with the composer present, he conducted in Queen’s Hall the first concert performance in Britain of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps.
He began to make recordings the following year and continued to do so for the next four decades. He was conductor of two American orchestras, Rochester (1923-31) and Cincinnati (1933-46). With the latter, he made a memorable series of RCA Victor recordings beginning in 1941.
In 1942 he invited several composers, including Aaron Copland, to compose patriotic fanfares. Copland responded with his Fanfare for the Common Man, the most celebrated and enduring of the fanfares written and performed during the 1942-43 season.
After a sex scandal in 1956 drove him from Australia, the final six years of Goossens’s life were difficult, although he enlarged his discography considerably. Goossens’s wide interpretative sympathies are reflected in his recordings, from acoustic to 35mm mag film and composers as diverse as Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Bax, Stravinsky, Respighi, Vaughan Williams, Ginastera, Tchaikovsky and Bizet will be included in this presentation.
Videographers: Michael and Leah Biel
Editor: Nathan Georgitis