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MUSIC CRITIC TALKS TO HIMSELF at 90
I asked myself “Who am I?”
“None of your business,” I was told.
So here I am a spectator
Watching to see what that fool will do next.
Look into a cat's eyes and you will see tuna fish
Blink slowly. look again and you will see the universe
There was a moment at every concert I covered for The Times — a tiny space of silence when audience rustling stops but no players are on stage — when I could never repress a twinge of expectation. Was something special about to happen? Sometimes it did. Read about Herbert von Karajan confiding tricks of the conductor’s trade. Yo-Yo Ma and his cello battling bravely against the airlines. Philip Glass and Robert Wilson happily obliterating operatic tradition. Farrakhan playing the fiddle. Linda Ronstadt looking for the rest of her voice. I have not forgotten them or their music. I hope to share them with you.
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY ABOUT BERNARD HOLLAND.
Nice Things
"No one today can match the limpid elegance and intellectual precision of his style, which recalls the heyday of Virgil Thomson."
-THE NEW YORKER
“Holland has a remarkable ability to conjure up the essence of a composer or a piece of music in a few deftly chosen words. He is, I think, an aphorist of unparalleled virtuosity.”
-SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Perhaps the most important of this town’s arbiters.”
-THE INDEPENDENT
Not so Nice Things
"Bah, Humbug, Bernard Holland!" -The Classical Music Guide
Bernard Holland was born in Norfolk, Va., educated at the University of Virginia, the Vienna Academy of Music and the Paris Conservatory and was for 27 years a music critic for The New York Times, five as chief critic. He is married to the writer and editor Beth Wareham. They live in New York City and Campobello Island, Canada.
A Critic Attends an Opening
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