Walter Goehr

Walter Goehr was born in Berlin in May 1903, the son of a banker, and studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg in his late teens. He worked as music director of Berlin Radio from 1925 to 1933, conducting a substantial programme of contemporary music — including the first radio broadcasts of much of the Second Viennese School — until the Nazi takeover forced his emigration. He settled in London in 1933 and became a British subject.

He held the conductorship of the BBC Theatre Orchestra from 1933 to 1939, then worked through the 1940s and 1950s with the Morley College Concerts (where he was instrumental in the post-war revival of Monteverdi, particularly *L’Orfeo* and *L’incoronazione di Poppea*), the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the various studio orchestras of the British concert scene. He was a key conductor of contemporary British music — premiering Tippett’s *A Child of Our Time* (1944), among others — and worked across film, ballet, and radio as well as the concert hall. His son Alexander Goehr became one of the leading British composers of the post-war generation.

Walter Goehr died in Sheffield in December 1960 while conducting a performance of Handel’s *Messiah*. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his work with British orchestras and Morley College.