Michael Steinberg

Carl Michael Alfred Steinberg (4 October 1928 – 26 July 2009) was an American music critic and author who specialized in classical music. He was best known, according to San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman, for "the illuminating, witty and often deeply personal notes he wrote for the San Francisco Symphony's program booklets, beginning in 1979." In 1939, Steinberg was among the 10,000 child refugees transported out of Germany via the Kindertransport; he and his mother settled in England. The two stayed with a family in Stapleford, Cambridgeshire, an assignment organized by the Quakers, and attended The Perse School. After four years in England, Steinberg and his mother joined the eldest brother Franz in St. Louis, US. After Princeton, he lived two years in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship, followed by a two-year stint in Germany with the U.S. Army.

Selected publications Books

Grove articles Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001