Biography

Music critic of the New York Times for twenty-five years

His so-called "feud" with Leonard Bernstein is famous. During Bernstein's 11-year tenure as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Schonberg would often find fault with his style of conducting and programming music. He once wrote a sharply critical piece about Bernstein's famous curtain speech to an audience, a speech in which he (Bernstein) stated that although he disagreed with pianist Glenn Gould's approach to Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, he found it fascinating and was going to go ahead and conduct it. Schonberg stated that Bernstein should have either refused to conduct, become "conveniently ill", or put his foot down and insist that Gould play the piece as Bernstein envisioned it.

His damning review of the 1976 Houston Opera's production of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" was the only dissenting review and was highly controversial.

In 1971, he became the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

One of Schonberg's best remembered criticisms of Bernstein was written after the famous 6 April 1962, performance before which Bernstein announced that he disagreed with pianist Glenn Gould's interpretation of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 but was going to conduct it anyway because he found it fascinating. Schonberg chided Bernstein in print, suggesting that he should have either refrained from publicizing his disagreement, backed out of the concert, or imposed his own will on Gould; Schonberg called Bernstein "the Peter Pan of music".