An Homage to Martin Bernheimer (September 28th, 1936 – September 29th, 2019)

One of the great honours for me in the last years was a compliment made by friend Misha Sachnoff. He compared me to his brilliant friend Martin Bernheimer - one of the most interesting critics ever!

Mr Bernheimer was a German-born American classical music critic. He studied at Brown University and the Hochschule für Musik in Munich as well as with the musicologist Gustave Reese at New York University.

Copyright: The New York Times

During his long career, he worked in New York writing for the New York Herald Tribune, at the Saturday Review, landing the position of music critic at the New York Post. In 1965 he moved to L.A. where he worked as the chief music and dance critic for the Los Angeles Times. During his thirty years with that paper, he was twice the recipient of  ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award (1974 and 1978) and in 1982 won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. From 1996 until his semi-retirement in 2017, Bernheimer's work appeared mainly in  Opera magazine and the Financial Times. Bernheimer lectured frequently and provided commentary for opera broadcasts.

He was, THE classical music critic noted for his witty, withering writing.

“Historically,” Mr Bernheimer wrote brilliantly in the Financial Times in 2008, “the best critics have guarded standards, stimulated debate and, in the complex process, reinforced the importance of art in society. They have been tastemakers, taskmasters and possibly ticket-sellers. Some have even written well.”

Mr Bernheimer certainly did.

Few classical critics possessed his way with words, or his eagerness to wield them without mercy.

And “on top of that”, he knew and had a profound knowledge of what he was writing about.

I miss this kind of attitude a lot in the present “dance world”. So many people in Austria and Germany without any (also technical) knowledge of dance “writing” such stupidity, such praise… for me they resemble more a “fan club” than serious art critics, as they call themselves. Sad. Or ss “Mrs Meers” (in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” would say: “Sad to be all alone in the world” :-)

The New York Times wrote on the occasion of his death: Martin Bernheimer, Tartly Eloquent Music Critic, dies at 83.