Pulitzer-winning classical music critic Martin Bernheimer dies at 83

Martin Bernheimer, who combined an encyclopedic knowledge of music with a brilliant, exuberant and sometimes lacerating command of the English language, died Sunday — one day after his 83rd birthday — at his home in Manhattan.

Bernheimer, who won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for criticism as a classical music writer at the Los Angeles Times, had been ill with sarcoma for several years, according to his wife, former Newsday theater critic Linda Winer.

There is a passage in James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson" in which Johnson expresses satisfaction in his company the previous night. "We had good talk," says Johnson. "Yes, sir," Boswell replies, "you tossed and gored several persons."

Nobody writing music criticism in the late 20th century could "toss and gore" better than Bernheimer.

"I have a reputation for being tough," Bernheimer admitted in 2012. "I'm not a patsy. I'm not an extension of the PR department." He added: "I never partake in the wine or cookies during an intermission. I don't like to socialize."

To those who knew only Bernheimer's prose, it came as a surprise to learn that he was a gentle, gracious and tender man to his colleagues. He supported the early careers of many young critics who disagreed entirely with him, simply because he believed in their talents.

Bernheimer was born in Munich on Sept. 28, 1936. His father was a member of an esteemed family of antique dealers, and his mother was a noted artist in Weimar Germany. "Bernheimer's mother read 'Mein Kampf' in 1933 and urged his father to leave Hitler's Germany," Winer recalled by email. "But his father said, 'Oh, no, this is our Germany, the country of great philosophers and artists.' "

Most of the Bernheimer family was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. An uncle traded a family estate in Venezuela to Germany to win the family's freedom after several months.

Martin and his parents moved to Massachusetts in 1939, where according to Winer the young man was raised on a chicken farm. "He was probably the only boy … listening to the Met Opera broadcasts while plucking chickens."

Bernheimer returned to Germany in 1950 and wrote his first article, a study of the postwar Munich opera scene that he tried to sell to The New York Times.

He studied music history and musicology at Brown University, graduating in 1958, and then returned to Germany to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich on a grant from the state of Bavaria. Much of his early writing was published in the Saturday Review, where he was a protege of Irving Kolodin.

Bernheimer moved to New York in the late 1980s after meeting and falling in love with Winer, who was then the chief theater critic and an arts columnist for New York Newsday. They married in 1992. "We used to think we'd make a good sitcom," Winer said Sunday. " 'Critics in Love.' "

His first marriage, to Lucinda Pearson, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, survivors include four children from his first marriage, Mark Bernheimer, Nora Caruso, Erika Bernheimer and Marina Bernheimer; and four grandchildren.