{{Use British English|date=September 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2026}} '''Richard Goldner''' (23 June 1908 – 27 September 1991) was a Romanian-born, Viennese-trained Australian violist, pedagogue and inventor. He founded Musica Viva Australia in 1945, which became the world's largest entrepreneurial chamber music organisation.<ref name=zipper>[http://www.ajhs.info/vic/20080710_BD-BD_launch_and_Beethoven_and_the_Zipper_(_Suzanne_Baker_).doc Australian Jewish Historical Society – Victoria]</ref> The Goldner String Quartet was named in his memory.
==Biography==
Richard Goldner was born in Craiova, Romania in 1908.<ref name="Baker">{{cite Australian Dictionary of Biography | first = Suzanne | last = Baker | title = Richard Goldner (1908–1991) | id2 = goldner-richard-15195 | year = 2014 | access-date = 29 August 2025 }}</ref><ref name="NAA A12508">{{cite web | url = https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Gallery151/dist/JGalleryViewer.aspx?B=7128686&S=1&N=2&R=0#/SearchNRetrieve/NAAMedia/ShowImage.aspx?B=7128686&T=P&S=1 | title = Item details for: A12508, 21/1560: Goldner Richard born 23 June 1908; Marianne age 23; nationality German; travelled per ''Orama'' arriving in Sydney on 14 March 1939 | publisher = National Archives of Australia | date = 23 May 2003 | access-date = 6 April 2018 }}</ref> His father, Avram Beer Goldner, was a delicatessen owner, and his mother was Bertha (née Sachter).<ref name="Baker"/> He grew up with an older brother, Gerard.<ref name="Baker"/> His family moved to Vienna when he was six months old.<ref name=oral>National Library, Oral History and Folklore: Interview with Richard Goldner, 7 November 1966</ref> He took up the violin at the age of four or five.<ref name=oral/> After leaving school, Goldner studied architecture at Vienna Technical University from 1925, but also enrolled at the New Vienna Conservatory (1927–30), where he studied under Simon Pullman.<ref name="Baker"/><ref name=oral/> He later received another diploma from the Academy of Music.<ref name=oral/> He received instruction at master classes from Bronisław Huberman and other violinists.<ref name=oral/> He played the viola in the Simon Pullman Ensemble from 1931 to 1938,<ref name=jewish/> and became Pullman's assistant and closest friend.<ref name=oral/> (Pullman was later to die in a Nazi extermination camp.)
Goldner and his wife, Marianne ''née'' Reiss, with his brother and sister-in-law, escaped the Nazi oppression of Jews in Austria and arrived in Australia on the ''Orama'' in March 1939, six months before the start of World War II.<ref name="Baker"/><ref name="NAA A12508"/><ref name=dict>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ELACebeQEgcC&dq=richard+goldner&pg=PA92 Atkinson, Knight, McPhee: The Dictionary of Performing Arts in Australia]</ref> There, although designated an enemy alien<ref name=zipper/><ref name=oral/> he soon became involved in musical life in his new country.<ref name=balmain>{{Cite web |url=http://www.balmainsinfonia.com/biography.htm |title=Balmain Sinfonia |access-date=28 March 2009 |archive-date=1 April 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090401013243/http://www.balmainsinfonia.com/biography.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> He founded the Monomeeth String Quartet, basing its name on an indigenous word for peace and harmony.<ref>[http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyers/stories/s1252348.htm Boyer Lecture, 28 November 2004]</ref>
However, because the Australian Musicians Union's restrictions on employing foreigners meant Goldner could not take up an offer of a position with an Australian Broadcasting Commission orchestra,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2009-1/dreyfus.pdf |title=The Foreigner, the Musicians' Union and the State in 1920s Australia: a Nexus of Conflict |access-date=6 April 2009 |archive-date=17 November 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091117015949/http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2009-1/dreyfus.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> he had to find other ways of making a living.<ref name=oral/><ref name=fair/> He worked as a jeweller<ref name=access>[http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-33384080_ITM Access my library]</ref> with Gerard.<ref name="Baker"/><ref name=oral/> They invented a new style of zipper that was resistant to sand and would not break under war-time conditions,<ref name=fair>[https://books.google.com/books?id=OfAhqP-ahfIC&dq=richard+goldner&pg=RA1-PA245 Elaine Thompson, Fair Enough]</ref> and which was vitally needed for use in the manufacture of parachutes.<ref name=jewish>{{Cite web |url=https://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=3203 |title=Australian Jewish News, May 2007 |access-date=28 March 2009 |archive-date=17 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080917224101/http://www.ajn.com.au//news/news.asp?pgID=3203 |url-status=dead }}</ref> For this, he was attached to the Army Inventions Directorate and the Royal Australian Air Force.<ref name=oral/> This invention made him a lot of money,<ref name=zipper/> and was acknowledged in the official history of Australia's war effort.<ref name=oral/><ref name=access/><ref name=Melba/> In 2011, the Oscar-winning former film maker Suzanne Baker published ''Beethoven and the Zipper: The Astonishing Story of Musica Viva''.<ref name=zip>[http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/author-plays-score-of-life-found-in-music-20110426-1duzs.html Steve Meacham, "Author plays score of life found in music", ''Sydney Morning Herald'', 27 April 2011]. Retrieved 14 March 2014</ref>
During the war, the then Minister for Immigration, Harold Holt, was personally very helpful in arranging passage for Richard Goldner's parents to Australia.<ref name=oral/>
==Musica Viva== {{main|Musica Viva}} In 1945 he founded "Richard Goldner's Sydney Musica Viva", whose first concert was held at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in Sydney on 8 December 1945,<ref name=jewish/> to an audience of over 1,000 people. The first item they played was Beethoven's ''Grosse Fuge'', Op. 133, in honour of his teacher Simon Pullman. (Pullman's makeshift chamber ensemble had been playing the ''Grosse Fuge'' in the Warsaw Ghetto in August 1942 when they were rounded up and sent to Treblinka, only one of them surviving.<ref name=jewish/>) During Goldner's concert there was a power blackout, and car headlights, an Army generator and hurricane lamps were used for illumination.<ref name=jewish/><ref name=access/><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.yprl.vic.gov.au/cdroms/yearbook2002/cd/wcd00002/wcd0024b.htm |title=Year Book Australia |access-date=28 March 2009 |archive-date=15 June 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615161446/http://www.yprl.vic.gov.au/cdroms/yearbook2002/cd/wcd00002/wcd0024b.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> The success of the concert inspired Goldner to form an organisation for the promotion of chamber music in all its forms. In this he was supported by Hephzibah Menuhin (then married to an Australian and living in Victoria) and assisted by a fellow refugee named Walter Dullo, a German lawyer-turned-chocolate maker and musicologist.<ref>{{Cite Australian Dictionary of Biography |volume=14 |year=1996 |title=Walter Andreas Dullo (1902–1978) |id2=dullo-walter-andreas-10057 |first=Klaus |last=Loewald |access-date=29 August 2025}}</ref> Together, Goldner and Dullo found 17 musicians (mostly also southern or central European refugees, and mostly Jewish) and formed them into four separate chamber groups under the name Musica Viva.<ref name=jewish/><ref>[http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/dnutting/germanaustralia/e/chron/chron6.htm German Australia]</ref> The initial funding for the organisation came from Goldner himself, from the proceeds of the manufacture of his zipper.<ref name=zipper/><ref name=oral/> They developed a punishing playing schedule throughout Australia and New Zealand, giving 170 concerts and travelling 50,000 miles a year.<ref name=oral/> Although they were always financially successful, this schedule became exhausting. This, plus the fact that Goldner had injured the first finger of his left hand while making another invention,<ref name=oral/> led to Goldner retiring from playing in 1952, and the group was disbanded, but it reformed in 1954.<ref name=dict/>
==Later life== Goldner had always wanted to teach violin and viola, and to conduct young people's orchestras.<ref name=oral/> In the early 1950s, Eugene Goossens, the Director of the NSW Conservatorium, approached him about teaching there, but he was far too busy with Musica Viva's playing schedule at that time.<ref name=oral/> He was again approached in the early 1960s, this time by the new Director, Sir Bernard Heinze, and he was now in a position to accept a teaching position.<ref name=oral/> He lectured in violin and viola.
In 1966 he moved to the United States with his former pupil Charmian Gadd. They taught at Pittsburgh and Washington (state). They married in 1970, when he was 62, and returned to Australia in 1981.<ref name=dict/> Richard Goldner collected one of the most extensive chamber music libraries in Australia, which he donated to the NSW Conservatorium.<ref name=oral/>
He died in Balmain, Sydney on 27 September 1991, aged 83.
==Honours== In June 1992, less than nine months after his death, a street in the Canberra suburb of Melba was named Goldner Circuit.<ref name=Melba>[http://www.legislation.act.gov.au/gaz/1992-S68/19920601-34076/pdf/1992-S68.pdf ACT Gazette, 1 June 1992]</ref>
The Richard Goldner Award was founded by the Balmain Sinfonia in 1993, and goes to the winner of a biennial concerto competition for the player of an orchestral string instrument.<ref name=balmain/> Charmian Gadd is the patron of the competition.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.balmainsinfonia.com/images/application-form.pdf |title=Balmain Sinfonia |access-date=28 March 2009 |archive-date=6 October 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111006230754/http://www.balmainsinfonia.com/images/application-form.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
==Goldner String Quartet== {{main|Goldner String Quartet}} The Goldner String Quartet was formed in honour of Richard Goldner in 1995, and consists of Dene Olding and Dimity Hall (violins), Irina Morozova (viola; an ex-pupil of Goldner)<ref>[http://musicaviva.com.au/musica_viva_festival/2008_musica_viva_festival/artists_and_events/performers/Irina_Morozova/about Musica Viva: Irina Morozova] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090416174640/http://musicaviva.com.au/musica_viva_festival/2008_musica_viva_festival/artists_and_events/performers/Irina_Morozova/about |date=16 April 2009 }}</ref> and Julian Smiles (cello).
==Bibliography== * Suzanne Baker, ''Beethoven and the Zipper: The Astonishing Story of Musica Viva'', 2011<ref name=zip/>
==References== {{reflist}}
== External links == * [http://www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmperson_00003210 Article for Richard Goldner] in the ''Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit''
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldner, Richard}} Category:1908 births Category:1991 deaths Category:Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to Australia Category:Austrian emigrants to Australia Category:Australian classical violists Category:Academic staff of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Category:20th-century Australian inventors Category:20th-century Romanian Jews Category:Romanian emigrants to Australia Category:Jewish Australian musicians Category:People from Craiova Category:20th-century classical musicians Category:20th-century violists