In 1929 at age 20, Goodman accepted an offer to teach at the
New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in
Sydney, Australia. Local musicians opposed the decision by the director
W. Arundel Orchard to bring in a man from abroad for a coveted position. Goodman was to teach at "the Con", on and off, for 50 years. While Professor of Piano by day, he often played all night at jazz clubs in the company of 'hardened drinkers and SP bookies'. In 1931, the English critic
Neville Cardus, who knew nothing of the 22-year-old Goodman, attended two of his recitals. His review described him as "the best pianist in Australia. I would cheerfully stake my reputation on Mr Goodman's playing in any capital city of Europe in pieces definitely pianistic or romantic in style. ... he is a natural pianist, he plays the piano as most of the rest of us breathe ... I did not believe it possible that I could ever again listen to the D flat Waltz of Chopin with virgin and delighted ears. But Mr Goodman rippled the hackneyed piece as though for the first time –
Horowitz himself could not have recreated it anew with more enchanting touch and tone and rhythm". In 1935 Goodman wrote the musical score for
Harry Southwell's film,
The Burgomeister. The score included a drinking song, a lullaby, a peasant song, and a waltz. Becoming the musical director of cinemas in Sydney and
Melbourne, Goodman played classical pieces between films. In 1940 he accompanied the English actor
Noël Coward when he appeared in Melbourne. During
World War II, in 1942 Goodman joined the
Australian Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant. He gave 200 performances to over 150,000 servicemen. In September 1944 he was discharged as medically unfit. He dedicated his
New Guinea Fantasy for piano and orchestra to the Australian servicemen. Although it was recorded towards the end of Goodman's life by the
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under
Patrick Thomas, the score was later lost, until its rediscovery at the
State Library of New South Wales. It received its first live performance at Llewellyn Hall,
ANU School of Music on 15 August 2025, by the
Canberra Symphony Orchestra with
Simon Tedeschi as soloist. After the war, Goodman returned to Great Britain. His farewell performance at the Sydney Town Hall included the first performance in Australia of
Prokofiev's
7th Sonata. A late 20th-century review of a video of the film described Goodman's music as being considered now as too European to be appropriate for its topic of Aborigines but noted that the European viewpoint was typical of the time. In 1956 Goodman played on the opening night of television station
TCN9 in Sydney. He served as the channel's musical director for two years. In 1967 he returned to teaching at the NSW Conservatorium. In the early days of Australian television, Goodman starred in two music series of his own.
The Isador Goodman Show ran on Melbourne station HSV-7 from 1956 to 1957. His second series was for Sydney station TCN-9 and was called
Music for You, running from 1958 to 1960. Seriously injured in a car crash in 1969, Goodman was sidelined from performing for four years. He made a triumphant return to the concert stage with an all-
Chopin recital in Sydney in 1973. Later that year he played with the
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in the first series of concerts at the new
Sydney Opera House. In February 1974 he appeared in concerts conducted by the American
Arthur Fiedler. In 1975, he played Liszt's
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 at the
Concert for Darwin, staged to raise funds for the city devastated by
Cyclone Tracy. On Sunday, 13 July 1980 Isador took on the triple role of conductor-soloist-arranger for the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra's concert at the Sydney Opera House which was a spectacular success. Goodman performed in a recital at the new Melbourne Concert Hall (now
Hamer Hall) on 31 July 1982. His last recital was at the
Sydney Town Hall on 26 September 1982. Goodman died of cancer on 2 December 1982. Later the same day, his lifelong friend and co-teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium,
Lindley Evans, also died. ==Marriage and family==