David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com’s founding Editor-in-Chief passed away Thursday morning, August 1, 2024 after a long battle with cancer. The end came shockingly quickly. Just a few days before we had been texting back and forth, and although he complained about discomfort from his chemotherapy treatments, he seemed to be doing fine. A few days later, on Wednesday evening, he was taken to the emergency room with an infection, and by the next day he was gone. None of us expected it, but I can’t help thinking that his manner of passing was in some ways characteristic of the man I knew: modest, reserved, completely opposed to any kind of posturing or posing, and always eager to avoid imposing himself on others.
As a writer and critic, however, he was just the opposite. His crystal-clear prose was pointed, witty, factually unassailable, and sometimes devastating.
I met David over 35 years ago when he was the Editor of CD Review magazine. It was the end of an era. I had been writing for High Fidelity and several other publications, all of which merged, de-merged, remerged, and ultimately tanked. CD Review was one of the last holdouts, but our work there together was short-lived. We bonded immediately, united by a love of music, a desire to promote great recordings, and a dedication to the dying art of writing criticism. As print publications vanished, we found ourselves looking for new outlets during tumultuous times. When Klaus Heymann of Naxos Records approached me in 1998 with the idea of starting a Web magazine for classical recording reviews–the Internet’s first–I immediately knew who the Editor-in-Chief for the new venture had to be.
David was not one to talk about himself. He wore his learning lightly. A graduate of the New England Conservatory with a degree in composition, his great love (after his daughter Dara and his wife Maria) was choral music. He wrote it, sang it, conducted it, reviewed it, and no one on earth knew more about it. From him, I learned vast new areas of the repertoire. He even taught me to love the Brahms German Requiem–which I never thought would happen–not by loudly bloviating about it, but by patiently explaining what to listen for and why it mattered. That was a gift. Don’t get me wrong: he wasn’t a figure of zen-like tranquility. He would speak with great animation about the things that mattered to him, and he had no tolerance at all for sloppiness, whether in critical writing or music performance. His ethical standards, both personally and professionally, in a profession often known for its smarminess and questionable habits, were unimpeachable. Honesty and absolute editorial independence were his guiding principles.
Over the past 25 years, David and I built a legacy of critical writing at ClassicsToday.com of which he was very proud, and very protective. Now that he’s gone, I regard it as an honor and a privilege to continue the project we started together. Although I can’t pretend to fill his shoes, he has pointed the way forward, and all of us at ClassicsToday.com will do our utmost to maintain the standard that he established. We will miss him terribly. I loved him like a brother, and I will not be able to do anything as a critic without hearing his voice whispering in my ear. I will always be thankful for that.
David Hurwitz, Executive Editor
