It seems to have vanished, but I do recall a little "heat".
I believe the thread you're referring to is this one about Cortot's Exercises:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=19043.0I think Bernhard's posts are very easy to misunderstand, because, while they present (possibly) the most well-developed pragmatic approach to pianism I've come across, it's easy to get the wrong idea about practically anything from them because of how fragmented they necessarily are. Learning the instrument is a large subject, and what we know of how the man operates we have through his answers to relatively specific questions. They're quite fragmented, and so it's easy to think he promotes ideas like "never use Thumb Under technique in scales" (Marik said Bernhard believed this once, I don't know if it was in that thread or another); "Never do a technical exercise ever" (I see this every once in a while); "You can immediately skip to difficult pieces without doing easier ones" (it's amazing that anyone would ever believe that), ect. When he never said anything of the sort. It's really something that, if you want a logical understanding of, you have to make an effort to do so by reading tons and tons of material.
I think the vast majority of the differences between Bernhard and Marik in that thread and others stem from two things: 1. A significant language barrier (Piano technique is one of the toughest subjects to write on and a huge one as well, and neither of them, I believe, we're native English speakers); and 2. A different goal for their students (Both wanted to have students reach independence and the ability to play even the Alkan Sonata if they really wanted to, but Bernhard was teaching amateurs and children while Marik (I believe) is a teacher in a conservatory.) To be entirely honest, I don't know that Marik raises an actually answerable point (that is, one that isn't totally subjective) against Bernhard in those threads which he hadn't already answered at least once elsewhere, but like I imagine they'd end up the best of friends if they got to discuss things face-to-face.
As a matter of fact, the most interesting posts by Bernhard for my purposes are ones which aren't even linked to and have to be found by sheer dumb luck looking through the archives of the forum (such as this wonderful thread about tempo:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=12075.0 or this one where he gives a rough progressive order for John Field's nocturnes:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=19177.0 (Interesting posts by Thal in that one, too)
One thing I quite liked about Bernhard, even though it was doubtless off-putting to many, was how hard he went out of his way to avoid "pulling rank" on anyone. For example: one of the few pieces we actually know (if he was being truthful) he plays from the advanced repertoire is Gnomenreigen. Suppose he'd posted a recording in the audition room, and it was a really fantastic one, an Arrau-level one or so; he'd probably have people be a lot less skeptical of his methods and accept them on face value, despite him expressly telling them not to. He wanted everyone who was even consider trying his ways of doing things to experiment with them, being as critical as possible. Personally, everything he suggested worked for me (only, however, after I spent a goodly amount of time reading many, many posts to be sure I understood what he was actually recommending and why), but that's no guarantee that they would work for anyone else or be the optimal solutions even for one they did work for, as he said multiple times. The point with him was not to get people to do what he said, but to get them to think.
Bernhard's method seems to have been motivated by two things: As strong a love of music as anyone ever had, and a realization that we will never have enough time to do all we want to musically. There is just too much possible to do, too much to learn from other composers, too much to improvise, too many ensembles and bands to play in. You could almost call it a "Bucket Liszt" approach to the piano.
There's a lot to elaborate on (so much so that I'm often tempted to create my own index of his posts, arranged in such an order that it can be fully understood in the quickest possible time), but that should do for who he was/is in my eyes. I'm sure he'll post again eventually, hopefully when we've all adopted Seymour Fink's piano terminology as standard, so we'll finally have a precise enough language to discuss these things properly.
(Of course, I could be misunderstanding all of this, though I don't currently believe so. Ain't life grand?
)
Best,
CLF
Topic: who was bernhard?