A View from the Rear
My grandfather’s unique take on the New York Philharmonic
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There were times when my grandfather, the great timpanist Saul Goodman, fell silent behind the helm of his large automobile (sometimes a Lincoln, sometimes a Cadillac). A half smile on his lips he would take in the road ahead while his fingers tapped out something specific on the edges of the steering wheel. “What’s playing Dad?” my aunt Helen would ask him. “Schubert!” he would reply without missing a beat. Or Dvorak or Schonberg or Brahms or a score of any of the dozens of composers whose works he’d mastered in the course of his 46 years with the New York Philharmonic. He’d then let out a little laugh at the distance he’d traveled in his mind and bring himself back to the reality of a pleasant drive with his family, whom he loved. “Nice smooth ride, right?” he’d say of the Cadillac or the Lincoln, which he also loved.
From the time he joined the Philharmonic at the age of 19 recognition flowed to him naturally. He was in his own words “lousy with talent.”
Nice smooth ride. While my grandfather lived through two world wars that claimed the lives of his only brother and his extended family in Warsaw, that phrase could justifiably be applied to how he journeyed through his time on earth. No pandering or cajoling was necessary to bring him the success he deserved. From the time he joined the Philharmonic at the age of 19 recognition flowed to him naturally. He was in his own words “lousy with talent.” He made lasting bonds with the other great talents of his era through the strength of his virtuosity and through the irrepressible optimism and good nature that bore him along happily for the majority of his days.
He could be stormy. We in his family think of him when we hear a thunder peal. I recall a dust up with him once when I got model airplane glue on the wall-to-wall olive carpet in his Yonkers home. But these things passed quickly. Mostly we remember him as abundantly cheerful. We grandchildren were particularly lucky because we came to know him in his retirement; not as he was becoming but after he had become. He had accomplished everything he’d set out to achieve. In his old age he had nothing left to do but attend to the…
