Reinhard Goebel
Chef d’orchestre
Reinhard Goebel, who has a better understanding of the wealth of music of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries than almost anyone else, is a figurehead of Early Music. As a promoter of historical performance practice for modern symphony and chamber orchestras as well as Early Music ensembles, he is in demand worldwide as an expert.
Reinhard Goebel studied violin under Franzjosef Meyer at Cologne University of Music, and at the Folkwangschule in Essen under Saschko Gawriloff. At the same time, he pursued his interest in the philology of music by studying musicology. After courses with Eduard Melkus and lessons with Marie Leonhardt, he founded the legendary Musica Antiqua Köln together with violist Hajo Bäß in 1973, which played a key role in the success story of Early Music. With this ensemble, Goebel specialised in the repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, which he now also performs as a conductor with modern orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, various radio orchestras and the symphony orchestras of Taipei, Melbourne and Sydney. Goebel succeeded Nikolaus Harnoncourt as professor of historical performance practice at the University Mozarteum Salzburg. Since 2018, the award-winning musician, who was voted one of the 20 best violinists of all time by [BBC Music Magazine] in 2015, has been artistic director of the Berlin Baroque Soloists. Since 2008, he has rehearsed works from the Baroque era with scholarship holders from the Karajan Academy on a number of occasions. To this day, Reinhard Goebel inspires and captivates the orchestral landscape by combining a passion for music-making with meticulous knowledge of the sources: “You first have to let a work unfold in sound, in other words really play it, and then say: Here I discover this, there I discover that. It’s a kind of interpretative work that I don’t do at my desk, where I say: let’s do the stroke here and the dynamics there. Instead, I try it out.”
