Bernard Jacobson

By Marina Weber on November 16, 2016.

Bernard Jacobson, until recently a contributing editor of Fanfare Magazine, has spent periods as music critic of the Chicago Daily News, a visiting professor of music at Roosevelt University in Chicago, the director of Southern Arts in Winchester, England, the promotion director for Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers, the program annotator and musicologist for the Philadelphia Orchestra (where he worked for eight years with Riccardo Muti and created the Orchestra’s chamber music series), the artistic director of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, and the artistic adviser to the North Netherlands Orchestra. He took over responsibility for program notes and pre-concert lectures for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia beginning with the 2001-2002 season. Born in London in 1936, Jacobson studied philosophy, history, and classics at Oxford. In addition to books on Brahms and on conducting, his publications include A Polish Renaissance (a study of the music of Panufnik, Lutosławski, Penderecki, and Górecki, published in 1996 by Phaidon Press), articles and reviews including entries in Encyclopaedia Britannicaand The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a booklet documenting Carnegie Hall’s 2000 Perspectives series in celebration of Daniel Barenboim’s 50th year on the concert stage, and translations from ten languages. He is currently working on a study of the music of Panufnik in collaboration with Philip Greenwood as well as on a memoir covering a critical career spanning nearly half a century.