Anthony Tommasini

Anthony Carl Tommasini (born April 14, 1948) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Though his parents were not musically inclined, Tommasini was interested in classical music from a young age. Beginning piano lessons in his youth, at 16 he won a piano competition at The Town Hall in Manhattan, performing a Mozart concerto. His piano teacher encouraged him to seek out Bach's Mass in B Minor. It proved formative: "I was emotionally overcome. And yes, I sensed immediately that Mrs. Gehrig was right about this mastepiece." From age 15 on, he regularly attended the Metropolitan Opera, with operas by Puccini being his favorites. Other formative performances included Joan Sutherland as Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor; Birgit Nilsson as the title role of Puccini's Turandot; Renata Tebaldi as Mimì in Puccini's La bohème; and Leontyne Price as the title role of Verdi's Aida. Tommasini also cites a performance of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring as having been particularly inspirational when he was in his teens. He was a fan of the pianist Rudolf Serkin, whose recitals he frequently attended, and was overwhelmed by Stravinsky conducting his Symphony of Psalms at the Lincoln Center. A graduate of Saint Paul's School in Garden City, New York, Tommasini studied piano with Donald Currier at Yale University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Music (1972). He subsequently earned a Doctor of Musical Arts (1982) from Boston University, during which he studied with the pianist Leonard Shure. A decade later, he won the 1998 Boston University School of Music Distinguished Alumni Award.

Career Based in Boston, Tommasini taught music at Emerson College from 1978 to 1986, and also led non-fiction writing workshops at Wesleyan University and Brandeis University. In 1985 at Emerson, he met the composer Virgil Thomson, who became both a friend and mentor. Tommasini published a survey of Thomson's piano music, Virgil Thomson's Musical Portraits (1986), which was a revision and expansion of his 1982 DMA dissertation. Thomson wrote a portrait of Tommasini, "Tony Tommasini: A Study in Chords". He was denied tenure at Emerson College, as the college eliminated his position; Tommasini later noted that although disappointing, "the best thing that ever happened to me was not getting tenure at Emerson, or I might still be there, and none of [my future career] would've happened". In response, Tommasini turned to music criticism. He was a freelancer, and wrote for The Boston Globe for a decade, beginning in 1986.

Tommasini became a staff writer for The New York Times in 1996, and was promoted to chief classical music critic in 2000. In addition to Thomson, his mentors include Richard Dyer, who was chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe for 33 years. At the Times, Tommasini traveled for important premieres of contemporary classical music, including Saariaho's L'Amour de loin (2000), Adès's The Tempest (2004) and Turnage's Anna Nicole (2011). He covered certain musicians particularly often, such as Peter Serkin, Leif Ove Andsnes, Michael Tilson Thomas and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Tommasini stepped down from his post in 2021; with a 21 year tenure he has been chief classical music critic of The New York Times for the longest period since Olin Downes. In April 2022, Zachary Woolfe was named Tommasini's successor as chief classical music critic for the Times.

Tommasini is the author of Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle, which received the 1998 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, and Opera: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Works and the Best Recordings. Also a pianist, Tommasini made two recordings of music by Virgil Thomson for Northeastern Records, Portraits and Self-Portraits and Mostly About Love: Songs and Vocal Works. Both were funded through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 2011, after soliciting comments from readers, Tommasini published a list of the ten greatest classical composers. They were, in order: 1. Johann Sebastian Bach 2. Ludwig van Beethoven 3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 4. Franz Schubert 5. Claude Debussy 6. Igor Stravinsky 7. Johannes Brahms 8. Giuseppe Verdi 9. Richard Wagner 10. Béla Bartók. The project was not without controversy. He added: "Would that I could include my beloved Puccini" and that "in an act of contrition, I am beginning a personal project to listen nonstop to recordings of Britten, Haydn, Chopin, Monteverdi, Ligeti and those composers whom I could not squeeze in but whose music carries me through my days. He discussed these composers, and others, in his book The Indispensable Composers (2018).

Tommasini lives on Central Park West in Manhattan, New York City with his husband Ben McCommon, who is a psychiatrist.

Selected writings Books

Articles

Discography + Recordings by Anthony Tommasini Year Album Performers Label 1990 Portraits and Self PortraitsWorks by Virgil Thomson Anthony Tommasini, piano; and Sharan Leventhal violin Northeastern Records 1994 Mostly about Love: Songs and Vocal WorksWorks by Virgil ThomsonNancy Armstrong, soprano; D'Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano; Frank Kelley and Paul Kirby tenor; Sanford Sylvan, baritone; David Ripley, bass; James Russell Smith, percussion.