February 11, 2005
Arthur Miller, Legendary American Playwright, Is Dead By MARILYN BERGER
Arthur Miller, one of the great American playwrights, whose work exposed the flaws in the fabric of the American dream, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 89. The cause was congestive heart failure, said Julia Bolus, his assistant.
The author of "Death of a Salesman," a landmark of 20th-century drama, Mr. Miller grappled with the weightiest matters of social conscience in his plays. They often reflected or reinterpreted the stormy and very public elements of his own life, including his brief and rocky marriage to Marilyn Monroe and his staunch refusal to cooperate with the red-baiting House Committee on Un-American Activities.
"Death of a Salesman," which opened on Broadway in 1949, established Mr. Miller as a giant of the American theater when he was only 33 years old. It won the triple crown of theatrical artistry that year: the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony Award.
But the play's enormous success also overshadowed Mr. Miller's long career. Although "The Crucible," a 1953 play about the Salem witch trials inspired by his virulent hatred of McCarthyism, and "A View From the Bridge," a 1955 drama of obsession and betrayal, would ultimately take their place as popular classics of the international stage, Mr. Miller's later plays never equaled his early successes. Although he wrote a total of 17 plays, "The Price," produced on Broadway during the 1967-68 season, was his last solid critical and commercial hit.
Nevertheless, Mr. Miller wrote successfully in a wide variety of other media. Perhaps most notably, he supplied the screenplay for "The Misfits," a 1961 movie directed by John Huston and starring Monroe, to whom he was married at the time. He also wrote essays, short stories and a 1987 autobiography, "Timebends: A Life." His writing remained politically engaged until the end of his life.
But his reputation rests on a handful of his best-known plays, the dramas of guilt and betrayal and redemption that continue to be revived frequently at theaters all over the world. These dramas of social conscience were drawn from life and informed by the Great Depression, the event that he believed had had a more profound impact on the nation than any other in American history, except possibly the Civil War.
"In play after play," the drama critic Mel Gussow wrote in The New York Times, "he holds man responsible for his and for his neighbor's actions."
Elia Kazan, who directed "All My Sons," "Death of a Salesman" and "After the Fall," recalled that "in the 30's and 40's, we came out of the Group Theater tradition that every play should teach a lesson and make a thematic point."
"Arthur organized his plays so that they came to a thematic climax," Kazan said. "He urged you to accept the thematic point."
The Broadway producer Robert Whitehead, who worked frequently with Mr. Miller, found a "rabbinical righteousness" in the playwright. "In his work, there is almost a conscious need to be a light onto the world. ... He spent his life seeking answers to what he saw around him as a world of injustice."
Mr. Miller, a lanky, wiry man whose dark hair turned to gray in his later years, retained the appearance of a 1930's intellectual whether wearing work boots and blue jeans while fixing his back porch or seated behind his word processor or typewriter when the power failed at his 350-acre farm in Litchfield County.
Writing plays was for him, he once said, like breathing. He wrote in "Timebends" that when he was young, he "imagined that with the possible exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human being could do."
He also saw playwriting as a way to change America, and, as he put it, "that meant grabbing people and shaking them by the back of the neck."
He had known hard work firsthand in an automobile-parts warehouse during the Depression; in what he called a mouse house, where he earned $15 a month feeding mice used in medical experiments; and on the night shift in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II.
But Mr. Miller called playwriting the hardest work of all. "You know," he said, "a playwright lives in an occupied country. He's the enemy. And if you can't live like that, you don't stay. It's tough. He's got to be able to take a whack, and he's got to swallow bicycles and digest them."
What Mr. Miller could not swallow was critics. During a 1987 interview, he dismissed them as "people who can't sing or dance." It was a reprise on a bitter theme he had sounded throughout his working life.
"I'm a fatalist," he said. "I consider I am rejected in principle. My work is, and through my work, I am. If it's accepted, it's miraculous or the result of a misunderstanding."
Mr. Miller once said, "I never had a critic in my corner in this country," and said he never saved the reviews of his plays, even the raves.
"There's an instinct in me that I had to exist apart from them, lest I rely on them for my esteem or despair," he said. "I don't know a critic who penetrates the center of anything."
Mr. Miller's antipathy was understandable. At one moment he was hailed as the greatest living playwright, and at another as a has-been whose greatest successes were decades behind him. Even at the height of his success, Mr. Miller's work received harsh criticism from some prominent critics. Eric Bentley, the drama critic for The New Republic in the 1950's, dismissed "The Crucible" writing, "The world has made this author important before he has made himself great."
Mr. Miller also despaired of the American theater, which he believed was too profit-oriented to allow writers and actors to flourish. He noted that opera and ballet in America were supported through contributions, but that what he called the "brutal inanity" of Broadway required that the American theater pay for itself.
"If the thing is gonna be regarded the same as the fish business, it ain't gonna work," he said in the feisty tones of his New York City boyhood. "In the whole entertainment enterprise, the theater has become a fifth wheel. People only take parts hoping it will lead to the movies."
Arthur Miller was born on West 110th Street in Manhattan on Oct. 17, 1915, to Augusta and Isidore Miller. His father was a coat manufacturer, and so prosperous that he rode in a chauffeur-driven car from the family apartment overlooking the northern edge of Central Park to the Seventh Avenue garment district. For young Arthur, life, as remembered in "Timebends," unfolded "as a kind of scroll whose message was surprise and mostly good news."
The Depression changed everything for the family, and it became a theme that etched its way through Arthur Miller's plays, from "Death of a Salesman" to "The Price" and "After the Fall," from "The American Clock" to "A Memory of Two Mondays." The crash meant the collapse of the coat business and a move from the apartment overlooking the park to considerably reduced circumstances in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where the teenage Arthur worked as a delivery boy for a bakery and developed a knack for carpentry, which left him fascinated, he said, with "the idea of creating a new shadow on the earth."
He attended James Madison High School, graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1932, and then went to work in the auto parts warehouse, earning $15 a week and saving $13 each week for college. Mr. Miller said he was not much of a student, but he knew by the time he was 16 that he wanted to be a writer. He recalled a terrific urge to tell stories, a talent that he said made him a center of attention at Dozick's corner drugstore.
When he had put away enough money for his freshman year, Mr. Miller went to the University of Michigan with the hope that he could write a play good enough to win the Avery Hopwood Award, an honor administered by the university that carried a prize of $250, enough for a second year at college.
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He did not win the first year, but managed to scrape together enough money to go back. He went on to win two Hopwood Awards, as well as a $1,200 award from the Bureau of New Plays of the Theater Guild. He earned more money by winning that one award than he had earned in three years at the warehouse. It became clearer than ever that playwriting was for him.
Within two years after his graduation, Mr. Miller had written six plays, every one of them rejected by producers except for "The Man Who Had All the Luck." When that play lasted only four performances on Broadway in 1944, he added two or three more plays to the reject pile and wrote "Focus," a novel about anti-Semitism.
In 1940 he married his college sweetheart, Mary Grace Slattery, with whom he soon had two children. To support his family he worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, wrote scripts for radio and gave himself a final shot at writing a play.
"I laid myself a wager," he wrote in his autobiography. "I would hold back this play until I was as sure as I could be that every page was integral to the whole and would work; then, if my judgment of it proved wrong, I would leave the theater behind and write in other forms."
That play was "All My Sons," which Brooks Atkinson, the drama critic of The New York Times, called "an honest, forceful drama about a group of people caught up in a monstrous swindle that has caused the death of 21 Army pilots because of defectively manufactured cylinder heads." It was selected as one of the 10 best plays of 1947, won two Tony Awards and took the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. (Eugene O'Neill's "Iceman Cometh" was the runner-up.)
"All My Sons" enjoyed a revival and new relevance when it was shown on public television in 1987, a year after the Challenger space shuttle exploded because of defective seals in the joints of its booster rocket.
In 1949 Willy Loman, riding on "a smile and a shoeshine" and determined to be not just liked but well liked, made his way into American consciousness in "Death of a Salesman." Mr. Miller wrote the play in six weeks, and for the first time in Broadway history, a play made a clean sweep of the top three awards: the Pulitzer, the Tony and the Drama Critics' Circle.
Acclaimed as a modern American masterpiece in its first reviews, translated into 29 languages and performed even in Beijing, "Salesman" was no sooner a major success of the Broadway stage than it was savaged in the intellectual journals as sentimental melodrama or Marxist propaganda.
"Death of a Salesman" stunned audiences. Mr. Atkinson called it "a rare event in the theater" and "a suburban epic that may not be intended as poetry but becomes poetry in spite of itself."
Lines from the play became hallmarks of the postwar era. "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away," Willy bellowed, coming to grip with the fact that he was no longer the hot-shot salesman he once was and finding himself pleading with his young boss to keep his job. "A man is not a piece of fruit." More eloquently, Willy's careworn wife spoke for the inherent dignity of her husband's life, providing a stirring refutation of the cruelties of America's capitalist culture: "Attention must be paid."
In 1950, Mr. Miller wrote an adaptation of Ibsen's drama "An Enemy of the People." This 19th-century play, whose hero resisted pressure to conform to the ideology of the day, resonated in the McCarthyite climate of the mid-20th century. Mr. Miller was encouraged to undertake the work by one of the foremost acting couples of that generation, Fredric March and his wife, Florence Eldridge, who, Mr. Miller wrote, were suing a man for libeling them as Communists and had agreed to play the leading roles.
The work, in philosophy at least, served as a forerunner of "The Crucible," a dramatization of the Salem witch hunt of the 17th century that implicitly articulated Mr. Miller's outrage at McCarthyism. In his autobiography he recalled that at one performance, upon the execution of the leading character, John Proctor, people in the audience "stood up and remained silent for a couple of minutes with heads bowed" because "the Rosenbergs were at that moment being electrocuted in Sing Sing."
"The Crucible" marked Mr. Miller's explosive rift with Kazan, the director of his greatest successes. Kazan's decision to name names at a House Committee on un-American Activities hearing incensed Mr. Miller, and the play was seen by some as a personal rebuke. Searching for a replacement, Mr. Miller and his producer, Kermit Bloomgarden, turned to Jed Harris, a domineering director whose career had faltered after a string of successes in the 1920's.
But Mr. Harris' production was not well received, with Atkinson criticizing his "overwrought" work. Five months into the run, with the box office lagging, Mr. Miller restaged the play himself, inserting a scene that had been cut. The revised version was better received, but the initial run was still unsuccessful.
Nevertheless, the play won Mr. Miller another Tony Award in 1953 and would go on to become his most frequently produced work.
"I can almost always tell what the political situation is in a country when the play is suddenly a hit there," he wrote in "Timebends." "It is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past."
Mr. Miller recalled that when he wrote "The Crucible," he hoped it would be seen as an affirmation of the struggle for liberty, for keeping one's own conscience.
"That's what it's become," he said with considerable satisfaction in a 1987 interview. "I was very moved by that play once again when the Royal Shakespeare Company did a production that toured the cathedrals of England. Then they took it to Poland and performed it in the cathedrals there, too. The actors said it changed their lives. Officials wept; they were speechless after the play, and everyone knew why. It was because they had to enforce the kind of repression the play was attacking. That made me prouder than anything I ever did in my life. The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities."
In 1956, Mr. Miller was himself called to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. By this time, his relationship with Monroe had made him a far more public figure than any of the awards he had won, and therefore a prime target who could attract attention to the committee in its waning days. Mr. Miller wrote in "Timebends" that his lawyer said there had even been an offer to cancel the hearing "provided Marilyn agrees to be photographed shaking hands" with the chairman of the committee, Representative Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Miller was applauded in Hollywood and in New York theater circles when he refused to name names, a courageous act in an atmosphere of palpable fear. He was cited for contempt of Congress, although he said he had never joined the Communist Party.
Of Mr. Miller's performance before the committee, Mr. Atkinson wrote in 1957: "He refused to be an informer. He refused to turn his private conscience over to administration by the state. He has accordingly been found in contempt of Congress. That is the measure of the man who has written these high-minded plays."
The year he appeared before the committee was the year the University of Michigan gave him an honorary degree. Two years later, the courts dismissed his citation for contempt of Congress.
In 1956, even as Mr. Miller's testimony had continued, he and Monroe were married, a union that Norman Mailer sourly remarked brought together "the Great American Brain" and "the Great American Body." The marriage - less than a month after his divorce from Ms. Slattery and two years after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio - was the consummation of a lengthy obsession that Miller, a moralist, had agonized over and even guiltily confessed to his wife. (John Proctor, the flawed hero of "The Crucible" in 1953, confesses a similar affair with a younger woman.)
He and Monroe had met in 1951 at a Hollywood party. Monroe was dating Kazan at the time, but the director had asked Mr. Miller, the newly minted Pulitzer winner, to cover for him as Kazan went on a date with another actress. It was a decision that Kazan would later regret as Monroe - the struggling, richly ambitious young actress - and Miller, the bold young voice of American theater, seemed to bond immediately.
"I watched them dance," Kazan would recall years later in his autobiography. "Art was a good dancer. And how happy she was in his arms!"
Whether both men's attraction - and sexual involvement - with Monroe played a part in their professional alienation is unclear. But in the end Miller captured Monroe's heart and she his mind.
For most of the four years of that marriage, Mr. Miller wrote almost nothing except "The Misfits," composed as a gift to his wife, who found herself increasingly tormented by personal demons and drug abuse despite a deep love for her husband. The film would premiere early 1961, shortly after the couple's marriage ended in divorce. A year later, Mr. Miller would remarry, and six months after that, Ms. Monroe would be found dead, a suicide, at her house in Los Angeles.
In a biography of Monroe, Maurice Zolotow wrote that Mr. Miller had "to give up his entire time to attend to her wants."
He was once asked if he had resented having to care for her to the detriment of his work. "Oh, yeah," he answered.
"After the Fall," his most overtly autobiographical play, brought Mr. Miller a storm of criticism when it was produced in 1964, shortly after Monroe's death. The play, which had been written soon after the collapse of their marriage, implies a search for understanding of his responsibility toward her, of her inability to cope and of his failure to help her. He insisted that he was dealing with large human themes and professed surprise when critics noted the resemblance between Monroe and Maggie, the drug-addicted, blond-wigged protagonist in the play, and accused him of capitalizing on Monroe's fame and defiling her image.
"The play," he said at the time, "is a work of fiction. No one is reported in this play. The characters are created as they are in any other play in order to develop a coherent theme, which in this case concerns the nature of human insight, of self-destructiveness and violence toward others." And although many of the characters were seen as thinly veiled representations of Mr. Miller himself and the people who had passed through his life, he said they resembled real people "neither more nor less than any other play I ever wrote."
Almost no one took his explanations at face value, and some of his critics considered the play a cruel way of getting even, not only with Marilyn Monroe but with her teachers from the Actors Studio, Paula and Lee Strasberg, who came in for Mr. Miller's special contempt.
Similar criticisms were voiced when Mr. Miller's last play, "Finishing the Picture," was produced at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in the fall of 2004. The play depicted the making of the movie "The Misfits."
But "After the Fall" did occasion Mr. Miller's reunion with Kazan, the most insightful director of his work. It was brought about by Mr. Whitehead, one of the architects of the ambitious plan to create an American repertory theater company as part of the new Lincoln Center complex. In his autobiography, "A Life," Kazan wrote, "Once brought together, Art and I got along well - even though I was somewhat tense in his company, because we'd never discussed (and never did discuss) the reasons for our 'break.' "
"After the Fall" was the inaugural production of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, although the new Vivian Beaumont Theater was not finished in time and the first season of the company was produced elsewhere. Mr. Miller contributed a second play, "Incident at Vichy," to the following season, but it, too, was not well received. Mr. Miller accepted the presidency of PEN International, the association of poets, editors, essayists, novelists and other literary figures, in 1965, and became increasingly active in defending the rights of writers. He was fond of recalling an appeal he received in 1966 to send some sort of message to Gen. Yakubu Gowon, who was about to take over the Nigerian government, to save the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, who was facing execution.
"Gowon," he wrote in his autobiography, "on seeing my name, asked ... whether I was the writer who had been married to Marilyn Monroe and, assured that that was so, ordered Soyinka released. How Marilyn would have enjoyed that one!" Mr. Soyinka went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1986.
Mr. Miller, who had spoken against the Vietnam War in 1965 at the first teach-ins on the subject at the University of Michigan, was also active in local political affairs in Connecticut and was elected to serve as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1968.
In 1967, he published a book of short stories, "I Don't Need You Any More," and continued to write plays. "The Price," a drama about two brothers, one a successful surgeon, the other a police officer who had given up the chance for a more promising career to support his father, was a modest success and received some critical approbation. Both would become increasingly elusive in the years that followed, even as Mr. Miller's works began to appear Off Broadway.
"The Creation of the World and Other Business," a serio-comic treatment of the human predicament in the Garden of Eden, closed after 20 performances on Broadway in 1972. Two years later, Mr. Miller turned to Genesis again and reworked "The Creation of the World" for his first musical, "Up From Paradise." It was produced Off Broadway and it, too, flopped.
Two later plays, "The Archbishop's Ceiling" (1976) and "The American Clock" (1980), which recalled his family's struggle during the Depression, were more successful in London than in the United States.
Mr. Miller made a less than triumphal return to Lincoln Center in 1987 with two one-act plays about the danger of remembering and the danger of forgetting, called "Danger: Memory!" Frank Rich, who was then the chief drama critic of The New York Times, wrote in a review, "While Arthur Miller's admirable voice of conscience remains firm as always, 'Danger: Memory!' is an evening in which the pontificator wins out over the playwright."
Mr. Miller enjoyed greater critical acclaim in 1980 with his dramatization for television of "Playing for Time," a book by Fania Fenelon, who survived Auschwitz by playing the violin to entertain Nazi officers. Mr. Miller opposed demands to have Vanessa Redgrave removed from the lead role because of her support of Palestinian causes.
"To fire her now because of her political views would be blacklisting," Mr. Miller said. "Having been blacklisted myself in time past, I have fought against the practice abroad as well as here, and I cannot participate in it now."
In his later years, Mr. Miller seemed to get greater satisfaction from writing books, although he continued the difficult work of writing plays.
After his divorce from Miss Monroe, Mr. Miller married Inge Morath, the Austrian-born photographer, with whom he had a daughter, Rebecca, an actress and a painter. With Ms. Morath, Mr. Miller collaborated on a number of books: "In Russia" (1969), "In the Country" (1977), "Chinese Encounters" (1979) and " 'Salesman' in Beijing" (1984).
Ms. Morath died in 2002. Besides Rebecca, he is survived by the children of his first marriage, Jane and Robert; a sister, Joan Copeland, an actress; and four grandchildren. He is also survived by his companion, Agnes Barley, a young painter whom he met shortly after Ms. Morath's death.
After his autobiography was published in 1987, he reflected in an interview on the course he had taken in life. "It has gone through my mind how much time I wasted in the theater, if only because when you write a book you pack it up and send it off," he said. "In the theater, you spend months casting actors who are busy in the movies anyway and then to get struck down in half an hour, as has happened to me more than once ... You have to say to yourself: 'Why do it? It's almost insulting.'"
But when asked how he wanted to be remembered, he did not hesitate. "I hope as a playwright," he said. "That would be all of it."
Charles Isherwood and Jesse McKinley contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/theater/11cnd-miller.html?sq=Isherwood%20&st=cse%22=&scp=3%22Playwright%20Whose%20convictions=&pagewanted=print&position=
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Friday, February 11, 2005
Arthur Miller: A Playwright Whose Convictions Challenged Conventions By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
AN APPRECIATION
A Playwright Whose Convictions Challenged Conventions By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Arthur Miller may or may not be the greatest playwright America has produced - Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams both have equal, if not more, claim to that phantom title - but he is certainly the most American of the country's greatest playwrights.
He was the moralist of the three, and America, as some recent pollsters rushed to remind us, is a country that likes moralists. The irony, of course, is that Mr. Miller's strongest plays are fired by convictions that assail some of the central ideals enshrined in American culture.
If O'Neill's concerns were more cosmic, and Williams' more psychological, Miller wrote most forcefully of man in conflict with society. His characters have no existence outside the context of their culture; they live only in relation to other men. Indeed, it was a fierce belief in man's responsibility to his fellow man - and the self-destruction that followed on his betrayal of that responsibility - that animated Mr. Miller's most significant work.
His greatest concerns, in the handful of major plays on which his reputation will last, were with the moral corruption brought on by bending one's ideals to society's dictates, buying into the values of a group when they conflict with the voice of personal conscience. To sell out your brother is to sell out yourself, Mr. Miller firmly believed.
Like all artists, Mr. Miller was a product of a particular historical moment. He lived through the Depression, absorbed the fiery righteousness of Clifford Odets's agitprop, and began writing plays just before and during the years of World War II. His first great success, "All My Sons," produced in 1947, fired a warning shot in the face of the country's growing complacency, in the wake of a war that was seen as establishing America's reputation as both the world's policeman and its moral conscience.
Mr. Miller's play scorchingly questioned that status, shining a harsh light on the ethos that underlay an exclusive veneration of individual rights. "All My Sons," in which a middle-class businessman looking out for his family causes the deaths of Army pilots, argued that a moral code that heedlessly placed the interests of the individual over responsibility to the group could breed corruption and destruction.
The roots of Mr. Miller's art stretch back to Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright who used tropes of melodrama to expose rents in the fabric of bourgeois society. But with "Death of a Salesman," inarguably his masterwork, Mr. Miller broke free from the conventions of naturalistic drama to write in a more stylistically unfettered manner. In this impressionistic portrait of a deluded man discarded by society, he achieved something akin to poetry. As Harold Clurman astutely put it, the poetry in "Death of a Salesman" is "not the poetry of the sense or of the soul, but of ethical conscience."
In "Death of a Salesman," Mr. Miller stated in clean dramatic terms his belief that the tragic hero of the American 20th century was the average man, a belief that caused ripples of contempt in academic circles even as it struck a powerful chord with audiences. Tragic or merely piteous, Willy Loman's desperate struggle against the onrushing knowledge that he has slaved in service to a false ideal of worldly success was a powerful repudiation of the hollow promises of the American dream.
As he sourly noted more than once, Mr. Miller was not long fashionable with many of the country's theater critics. Even in his finest work, he sometimes succumbed to overstatement. He was probably the least subtle of America's Big Three - and neither O'Neill nor Williams was a particularly subtle playwright. Themes, motifs, moral conclusions often glare from his plays like neon signs in a diner window.
But, like all significant artists, in his finest works Mr. Miller transcended his flaws. In the case of "Death of a Salesman," he even made a virtue of them: The repeated iterations of the play's sonorous lines - "Attention must be paid," "Nobody dast blame this man" - have the solemn and unforgettable effect of a bell tolling deep, loud and long. And, as continual revivals of "The Crucible," "All My Sons" and "A View From the Bridge" attest, his plays are so strongly saturated in trenchant observations about man's flaws, and his struggles against the social forces that will exploit them, that they retain their full power to engage and move us.
In the last decades of his life, Mr. Miller continued to write plays in the face of critical indifference; he never lost faith in the value of the writer's work. His decline in popularity coincided with Broadway's loss of hegemony in the American theater, although he had nothing but contempt for the crass atmosphere of the commercial theater. The playwrights associated with the Off Broadway movement that bloomed in the 1960's - Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and others - wanted to tear down the conventional structures that had served so solidly as the vessels for Mr. Miller's ideas. And yet in their stylistically far different analyses of the contaminations of late 20th-century life, and their use of the American family as an image to be ruthlessly dissected, can be heard distant echoes of Mr. Miller's vision. "Death of a Salesman" has been cited by innumerable and wildly different playwrights as a seminal influence, from Lorraine Hansberry to Vaclav Havel to Tom Stoppard.
That his greatest plays have been produced widely on international stages suggests that the ills Mr. Miller diagnosed in America in the postwar years are not specific to the country or the era; they merely took firmest root in the soil of a country on a meteoric rise to the top of the global heap.
By now, the American dream has been thoroughly dissected, but American values continue to be touted by politicians as the country's most fruitful export. And so Mr. Miller's greatest plays, in which he used both his conscience and his compassion to question the prerogatives of American society, remain both as unfashionable and as necessary as ever.
A Playwright Whose Convictions Challenged Conventions By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Arthur Miller may or may not be the greatest playwright America has produced - Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams both have equal, if not more, claim to that phantom title - but he is certainly the most American of the country's greatest playwrights.
He was the moralist of the three, and America, as some recent pollsters rushed to remind us, is a country that likes moralists. The irony, of course, is that Mr. Miller's strongest plays are fired by convictions that assail some of the central ideals enshrined in American culture.
If O'Neill's concerns were more cosmic, and Williams' more psychological, Miller wrote most forcefully of man in conflict with society. His characters have no existence outside the context of their culture; they live only in relation to other men. Indeed, it was a fierce belief in man's responsibility to his fellow man - and the self-destruction that followed on his betrayal of that responsibility - that animated Mr. Miller's most significant work.
His greatest concerns, in the handful of major plays on which his reputation will last, were with the moral corruption brought on by bending one's ideals to society's dictates, buying into the values of a group when they conflict with the voice of personal conscience. To sell out your brother is to sell out yourself, Mr. Miller firmly believed.
Like all artists, Mr. Miller was a product of a particular historical moment. He lived through the Depression, absorbed the fiery righteousness of Clifford Odets's agitprop, and began writing plays just before and during the years of World War II. His first great success, "All My Sons," produced in 1947, fired a warning shot in the face of the country's growing complacency, in the wake of a war that was seen as establishing America's reputation as both the world's policeman and its moral conscience.
Mr. Miller's play scorchingly questioned that status, shining a harsh light on the ethos that underlay an exclusive veneration of individual rights. "All My Sons," in which a middle-class businessman looking out for his family causes the deaths of Army pilots, argued that a moral code that heedlessly placed the interests of the individual over responsibility to the group could breed corruption and destruction.
The roots of Mr. Miller's art stretch back to Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright who used tropes of melodrama to expose rents in the fabric of bourgeois society. But with "Death of a Salesman," inarguably his masterwork, Mr. Miller broke free from the conventions of naturalistic drama to write in a more stylistically unfettered manner. In this impressionistic portrait of a deluded man discarded by society, he achieved something akin to poetry. As Harold Clurman astutely put it, the poetry in "Death of a Salesman" is "not the poetry of the sense or of the soul, but of ethical conscience."
In "Death of a Salesman," Mr. Miller stated in clean dramatic terms his belief that the tragic hero of the American 20th century was the average man, a belief that caused ripples of contempt in academic circles even as it struck a powerful chord with audiences. Tragic or merely piteous, Willy Loman's desperate struggle against the onrushing knowledge that he has slaved in service to a false ideal of worldly success was a powerful repudiation of the hollow promises of the American dream.
As he sourly noted more than once, Mr. Miller was not long fashionable with many of the country's theater critics. Even in his finest work, he sometimes succumbed to overstatement. He was probably the least subtle of America's Big Three - and neither O'Neill nor Williams was a particularly subtle playwright. Themes, motifs, moral conclusions often glare from his plays like neon signs in a diner window.
But, like all significant artists, in his finest works Mr. Miller transcended his flaws. In the case of "Death of a Salesman," he even made a virtue of them: The repeated iterations of the play's sonorous lines - "Attention must be paid," "Nobody dast blame this man" - have the solemn and unforgettable effect of a bell tolling deep, loud and long. And, as continual revivals of "The Crucible," "All My Sons" and "A View From the Bridge" attest, his plays are so strongly saturated in trenchant observations about man's flaws, and his struggles against the social forces that will exploit them, that they retain their full power to engage and move us.
In the last decades of his life, Mr. Miller continued to write plays in the face of critical indifference; he never lost faith in the value of the writer's work. His decline in popularity coincided with Broadway's loss of hegemony in the American theater, although he had nothing but contempt for the crass atmosphere of the commercial theater. The playwrights associated with the Off Broadway movement that bloomed in the 1960's - Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and others - wanted to tear down the conventional structures that had served so solidly as the vessels for Mr. Miller's ideas. And yet in their stylistically far different analyses of the contaminations of late 20th-century life, and their use of the American family as an image to be ruthlessly dissected, can be heard distant echoes of Mr. Miller's vision. "Death of a Salesman" has been cited by innumerable and wildly different playwrights as a seminal influence, from Lorraine Hansberry to Vaclav Havel to Tom Stoppard.
That his greatest plays have been produced widely on international stages suggests that the ills Mr. Miller diagnosed in America in the postwar years are not specific to the country or the era; they merely took firmest root in the soil of a country on a meteoric rise to the top of the global heap.
By now, the American dream has been thoroughly dissected, but American values continue to be touted by politicians as the country's most fruitful export. And so Mr. Miller's greatest plays, in which he used both his conscience and his compassion to question the prerogatives of American society, remain both as unfashionable and as necessary as ever.
Friday, January 16, 2004
A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul By JAMES R. OESTREICH
January 16, 2004
A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul By JAMES R. OESTREICH
THE music of Robert Schumann (1810-56) is something of a litmus test for performers. Quite simply, it tends to attract the finest, the most musical.
There are no easy effects in his music. Although many of his works offer technical challenges, they are not of the sort likely to wow audiences in and of themselves. Even in his concertos, there is little room for empty virtuosity. But lyricism is everywhere, and it works like catnip on musicians with real soul.
Still, the deep-seated affection of some is not always matched by a profound respect from all. It is easy to condescend to Schumann, to discount his stunning originality by attributing it in part to the meanderings of a mind addled by syphilis. A master of the miniature, he had relatively little success in large-scale ventures. His theatrical works and big choral pieces are little known. Even his symphonies have long been faulted for a perceived murkiness in orchestration and texture.
Yet those symphonies seem to be everywhere at the moment. Kurt Masur leads the New York Philharmonic in the Third this weekend in Purchase, N.Y., and at Avery Fisher Hall. Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin perform all four at Carnegie Hall next week in concerts that also include the concertos and other works. Teldec, meanwhile, has released recordings of the symphonies by Mr. Barenboim and the Staatskapelle.
All this comes just a season after Wolfgang Sawallisch presented the four symphonies with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie. And that orchestra has since released its own recordings of the symphonies.
With this impetus, the classical music critics of The New York Times are encouraging a closer listen to Schumann generally, with recommendations of favorite CD's. Their selections are on Page 28.
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
SYMPHONIES (4), VIOLIN CONCERTO, ANDANTE AND VARIATIONS. Leonidas Kavakos, violinist; Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor and pianist; others; Philadelphia Orchestra (with Clara Schumann songs, sung by Thomas Hampson; Philadelphia Orchestra; three CD's).
PIANO QUINTET, PIANO QUARTET IN E FLAT. Menahem Pressler, pianist; Emerson String Quartet (Deutsche Grammophon 445 848-2).
STRING QUARTETS NOS. 1 AND 3. Zehetmair Quartet (ECM New Series 1793).
VIOLIN SONATAS NOS. 1 AND 2. Gidon Kremer, violinist; Martha Argerich, pianist (Deutsche Grammophon 419 235-2).
''DAS PARADIES UND DIE PERI,'' ''REQUIEM FÜR MIGNON,'' ''NACHTLIED.'' Barbara Bonney, soprano; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; others; Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Deutsche Grammophon Archiv 289 457 660-2; two CD's).
I DON'T get it: this eternal carping about unimaginative orchestration and awkward voice-leading in Schumann's symphonies. These ebullient creations are what they are, and they work for me every time -- in a good performance, that is.
At the moment, I'm particularly fond of Wolfgang Sawallisch with the Philadelphia Orchestra in performances recorded live last season and repeated at Carnegie Hall. There is nothing here either lightweight or heavy-handed, and the freshness of Mr. Sawallisch's approach is all the more remarkable given the parlous state of his health over the last year; the Second was recorded late in the season, and he began canceling appearances soon after. The ''Spring'' Symphony performance is a special treasure, quite possibly addictive. Mr. Sawallisch, a superb pianist, is heard in that role in a chamber work, the Andante and Variations, and in songs by Clara Schumann.
In advance, Teldec has issued a memento of another Carnegie series: Daniel Barenboim's with the Staatskapelle Berlin next week. I find these interpretations of the symphonies less persuasive at first hearing, a little fussy and studied in their pushings and pullings. But I'm eager to hear whether those gestures and others might sound more spontaneous in the Carnegie concerts.
An enduring favorite among the symphonies is Christoph von Dohnanyi's set with the Cleveland Orchestra on Decca. In some ways, this orchestra -- lithe, clear and precise -- has long been an ideal Schumann instrument, whether led by George Szell, Mr. Dohnanyi or, presumably, the relative newcomer Franz Welser-Möst. (The Szell recordings on Sony are also classics.) The orchestra's virtues are most apparent in the mercurial scherzo of the Second Symphony, which Mr. Dohnanyi liked to carry in his trunk as an encore.
Although Schumann's chamber music also comes in for some carping, the Piano Quintet is almost universally recognized as a masterpiece. To the worthy renditions cited elsewhere on this page, I will add the collaboration between Menahem Pressler and the Emerson String Quartet. These are all chamber musicians of abundant gifts, wide experience and distinctive styles, and it is fascinating to hear the musical ground shift between Mr. Pressler's relative mellowness and the Emerson's characteristic fire: a scintillating mix.
In music that does not strain to sell itself, fire is often a good thing; conviction is essential. Those qualities pervade the other chamber discs listed here as well. The Zehetmair Quartet's performances make a persuasive case for two of Schumann's string quartets, especially the First, as masterworks. Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich cannot do as much with the slighter material of two violin sonatas, but their urgent performances make the works sound eminently respectable and, more important, appealing.
Veering way off the beaten path, John Eliot Gardiner offers lovely performances of three Schumann choral pieces dripping with good tunes.
''Das Paradies und die Peri'' is a large-scale work in three parts, and though it cannot be said that the drama is maintained consistently, each part builds to a compelling finale. The melting lullaby that ends the second part is itself worth the price of a disc, maybe both.
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By JOHN ROCKWELL
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
''KREISLERIANA.'' Hélène Grimaud, pianist (with Brahms's Piano Sonata No. 2; Denon CO-73336).
PIANO QUINTET. Arthur Rubinstein, pianist; Guarneri Quartet (with Brahms's Piano Quintet; RCA Red Seal 09026-5669-2).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 24), SONGS. Ian Bostridge, tenor; Julius Drake, pianist (EMI Classics 5 56575 2).
SYMPHONIES (4). Staatskapelle Berlin, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (Teldec 2564 61179-2; two CD's).
''SCENES FROM GOETHE'S 'FAUST.' '' Bryn Terfel, Karita Mattila and other soloists; Tölzer Knabenchor, Swedish Radio Chorus, and Eric Ericson Chamber Chorus; Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado (Sony Classical S2K 66308; two CD's).
THIS selection of favorite Schumann recordings is not based on exhaustive comparisons of every performance of every masterpiece. That way lies madness. (Of course, some might argue that it's already kind of mad to own 25 different performances of the ''Rhenish'' Symphony, some in multiple formats.) So my choices are based partly on memory and nostalgia, although, to 'fess up, I did do some semi-exhaustive relistening. I have chosen one recording in each musical genre.
Schumann is best known as a composer for the piano. I've long had a weak spot for the playing of Hélène Grimaud, especially in German repertory. Her recording of ''Kreisleriana,'' coupled with Brahms's Sonata No. 2 (everyone couples Schumann and Brahms, for biographical as well as musical reasons), made when she was only 19, combines rangy technique, vivid personality and a rich sense of the Romantic performance tradition.
Schumann's chamber music often involves the piano. Arthur Rubinstein's recording of the Piano Quintet in E flat with the Guarneri Quartet, besides being a magisterial performance, is also a tribute to Rubinstein's many superb Schumann recordings, so influential in shaping my tastes.
The eight-volume series of complete Schumann songs on Hyperion belongs in every serious collector's library. But for a single disc, I would choose Ian Bostridge's grouping of the Opus 24 ''Liederkreis,'' ''Dichterliebe'' and seven other songs, handsomely accompanied by Julius Drake. Mr. Bostridge has an ethereal tenor, sometimes so silvery and hushed that you're almost embarrassed by the intimacy. But he can rise to the bolder, more despairing songs, like ''Ich Grolle Nicht,'' too. A remarkable disc.
Schumann's orchestral music is also wonderful, despite all the controversies that have surrounded his orchestration: thick and inept, or rich and Romantic? I tend toward the latter, but there have been wonderful performances in all styles and all kinds of instrumentation. As much as I regret not including Arturo Toscanini's fulminating account of the ''Manfred'' Overture, I will stick with the symphonies.
For decades I preferred Leonard Bernstein's raw, impassioned performances with the New York Philharmonic (better than his later, slicker versions with the Vienna Philharmonic). I love them still, but Daniel Barenboim's new set with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the same group he will lead in Schumann at Carnegie Hall next week, is wonderfully lyrical and idiomatic, and in superb sound as well. It's way better than his earlier set with the Chicago Symphony.
Finally, large-scale, quasi-operatic, quasi-oratorio effusions: Schumann could imbue his instrumental music and songs with plenty of drama, but like some other great composers, he never found his footing in opera. Still, his ''Scenes From Goethe's 'Faust,' '' in a sumptuous recording from Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic and a remarkable roster of singers, must be on the list. And even if the work falls short of counterparts by Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod and Mahler as an evocation of ''Faust,'' its seraphic beauties and contrapuntal rigor work wonderfully on their own terms.
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Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
''HUMORESKE,'' ''FANTASIESTÜCKE,'' ''NOVELLETTEN.'' Sviatoslav Richter, pianist (Melodiya 74321 29464 2).
FANTASY IN C, ''FASCHINGS-SCHWANK AUS WIEN,'' ''PAPILLONS.'' Sviatoslav Richter, pianist (EMI Classics 5 75233 2).
PIANO SONATA NO. 1, ''KREISLERIANA.'' Murray Perahia, pianist (Sony Classical SK 62786).
PIANO CONCERTO. Leif Ove Andsnes, pianist; Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Mariss Jansons (with Grieg's Piano Concerto; EMI Classics 5 57562 2).
ROBERT SCHUMANN never quite had a grip on reality. In his later life, his condition turned tragic. But even as a moody youth, he apparently spent whole days in some fantastical realm of his own invention.
Though it's dangerous to romanticize mental illness, one can't help thinking that Schumann's unhinged imagination, counterbalanced by a probing musical intellect, led to some of the Romantic era's most original music. The instrument that best served his needs in that exploratory early period was the piano. So though I adore Schumann's lieder and chamber works, I'll leave those genres to others and stick to the piano for some recommendations.
To experience how wonderfully strange Schumann's imagination could be, listen to the ''Humoreske.'' Some find it a rambling collection of indistinctly defined sections. I find it audaciously inventive, full of startling fits and turns. The opening section, a wistful tune with a softly rippling accompaniment, jumps right into a hypercharged dance that seems at once bumptious and terrifying.
Sviatoslav Richter's colossal performance, recorded in Moscow in 1956, is a landmark in the Schumann discography. Richter produces piano effects that might seem impossible. In a section marked ''Hastig'' (''Hurried''), for example, a restless right-hand pattern that faintly outlines a melody is supported by a chordal left-hand accompaniment. Schumann also adds a middle staff to the score for an ''Innere Stimme'' (''Inner Voice''), though in a footnote he explains that this voice is not to be played but simply ''read between the lines, as it were.'' Well, somehow, Richter plays it. By highlighting notes that are merely grazed by the right- and left-hand parts, he makes a hazy and unperturbed inner melody magically emerge from the texture.
If you have trouble finding this disc (it has also been released by BMG as part of a 10-CD set of Richter performances), you can certainly find Richter's enthralling 1962 recording of three other Schumann works, drawn from concert performances in Italy and reissued in 2002. The album begins with a sweepingly grand account of the Fantasy in C; despite its title, this is Schumann's most ingeniously structured score. There is also an ebullient version of ''Faschingsschwank aus Wien'' and, best of all, a mercurial ''Papillons,'' played with infectious innocence and sudden bursts of power in the stern march sections but not a trace of sentimentality.
Murray Perahia's 1997 recording of ''Kreisleriana,'' a sprawling suite of eight movements aptly subtitled ''Fantasies for Piano,'' beautifully balances the music's impetuosity and its refinement. But the marvel of this disc is Mr. Perahia's bracing account of the formidable First Sonata; his playing untangles the webs of counterpoint in a sprawling work that can easily sound dense and convoluted.
Finally, Leif Ove Andsnes's scintillating, lucid and lyrical recording of the Piano Concerto, with Mariss Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic, released last year, makes this repertory staple sound newly vibrant and important. It proves that Schumann could compose deftly structured compositions when he put his mind to it. Of course, his mind eventually had an agenda of its own.
January 16, 2004
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By ALLAN KOZINN
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
''CARNAVAL,'' ''FANTASIESTÜCKE'' (OP. 12), PIANO WORKS. Arthur Rubinstein, pianist (RCA Victor Red Seal 09026-63020-2).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 24), SONGS. Ian Bostridge, tenor; Julius Drake, pianist (EMI Classics 5 56575 2).
PIANO CONCERTO, PIANO QUINTET. Rudolf Serkin, pianist; Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy; Budapest String Quartet (Sony Classical MYK 37256).
STRING QUARTETS NOS. 1 AND 3. St. Lawrence String Quartet (EMI Classics 5 56797 2).
SYMPHONIES (4); ''MANFRED'' OVERTURE. Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by George Szell (Sony Classical MH2K 62349; two CD's).
WHETHER or not it was syphilis that drove Schumann mad, as musicologists have long argued, he was always a bit odd. He destroyed his career as a pianist by affixing weights to his fingers in hopes of strengthening them. He created fictional antagonists (Florestan and Eusebius) who carry on arguments in both his music and his essays. And his love life was a matter of intense fixations that led more than one father to put his daughter out of Schumann's way.
It is in his piano music that Schumann's peculiarities show up most vividly, and the work that offers the best view of his overheated imagination is ''Carnaval.'' Schumann was 24 when he began the work, and his infatuation with both Clara Wieck, his teacher's 13-year-old daughter (and eventually his wife), and Ernestine von Fricken, a 17-year-old fellow student, are documented in two of the work's movements. So are the poetic Eusebius and the fiery Florestan (who are fleshed out further in the ''Fantasiestücke''). Well-drawn tributes to Chopin and Paganini are included among the 21 vignettes, and the closing ''March of the Davidsbündler Against the Philistines'' is Schumann's argument for free-spirited originality in new music.
Rubinstein's monaural recordings from the late 1940's and early 50's have greater drive and directness than the stereo versions of the same works recorded in the 60's (available in Volume 51 of RCA's Rubinstein Edition), but you can't go far wrong with either. Rubinstein caught the almost cinematic drama of these pieces as well as the sheer beauty of their surfaces.
After the solo piano works, Schumann's songs offer the most direct window into his psyche, and the best are the ''Liederkreis'' and ''Dichterliebe'' cycles, settings of Heine poetry steeped in romantic yearning, outright rejection and other evocations of unrequited love. Sumptuous readings are plentiful, but Ian Bostridge's supple phrasing and careful coloration give the bitterness in these songs an almost visceral quality. Between the cycles, Mr. Bostridge offers seven more Heine songs as an attractive bonus.
Because the Piano Concerto is one of the great war horses, it can be difficult to hear fresh. But among the charms of Rudolf Serkin's account is the deftness with which he captures the music's grandeur and prevents it from sounding bombastic. Better still is the charged reading of the Piano Quintet, a collaboration with the Budapest String Quartet, recorded at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont in 1963.
Schumann's symphonies and string quartets are an acquired taste: in both cases, structural eccentricities suggest a lack of control rather than (as Beethoven's structural eccentricities do) willful iconoclasm. Yet in the right hands, they can sound like masterpieces. By finding the right balance between explosive tension and introspective warmth, the St. Lawrence players make the First and Third Quartets seem rational, even persuasive. George Szell does similarly for the symphonies, bringing to these bigger canvases the same quality of fully controlled, precise power that animates Serkin's reading of the concerto.
January 16, 2004
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By JEREMY EICHLER
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
PIANO QUINTET, CHAMBER WORKS. Martha Argerich, pianist; Nobuko Imai, violist; Mischa Maisky, cellist; others (EMI Classics 5 57308 2).
PIANO TRIO NO. 1. Alfred Cortot, pianist; Jacques Thibaud, violinist; Pablo Casals, cellist (with Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1; Naxos 8.110185).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 39). Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Alfred Brendel, pianist (Philips 416 352-2).
FANTASY IN C, ''FASCHINGS-SCHWANK AUS WIEN,'' ''PAPILLONS.'' Sviatoslav Richter, pianist (EMI Classics 5 75233 2).
PIANO CONCERTO, VIOLIN CONCERTO. Martha Argerich, pianist; Gidon Kremer, violinist; Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Teldec 4509-90696-2).
SCHUMANN was a capable symphonist, but it was the smaller-scale chamber works, solo piano music and lieder that best served his unique wedding of structure and emotion, rigor and rue. To feel his way into these creative worlds, he often relied on his first musical love, the piano, and we can thank an injury to a middle finger for the fact that he did not become a piano virtuoso himself and thus leave his greatest works unwritten. (We can also thank the primitive state of medicine at the time: Schumann's attempted therapies included bathing his finger in the entrails of a dead animal.)
At the core of his chamber output is the Piano Quintet, which epitomizes his gift for toggling between the pleasures of heart and mind. One might not expect a good recording from an ad hoc assembly of soloists but Martha Argerich and friends offer an exciting live rendition with driving rhythmic intensity, lush instrumental textures and an adrenaline-laced expressivity. More Schumann chamber music rounds out this disc, including the ''Märchenbilder,'' gracious miniatures for viola and piano, which receive a lovely reading by Ms. Argerich and Nobuko Imai.
My next pick hails from a distant sonic galaxy, far removed from the sleek modern sound and high-octane playing of Ms. Argerich and company. Indeed, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, the cellist Pablo Casals and the pianist Alfred Cortot made up a legendary ensemble from a much earlier era of music-making, and their famed performance of Schumann's D minor Piano Trio has a warm conversational quality, a dreamy legato phrasing and a mellow sweetness of tone unlike anything one finds today. The recording was made in the late 1920's, but all three musicians were born less than a quarter century after Schumann's death, and their playing maintains deep ties to the very Romantic tradition that the composer helped define. If you can listen through the inevitable surface noise, you will hear old-world Schumann at its most tender and beautiful.
Schumann's melancholic songs offer another perspective on his dark-hued genius, and in particular his keen sensitivity to the poetry and literature that so often inspired his work. Seldom is this more apparent than with the famous ''Liederkreis'' settings of the poetry of Joseph von Eichendorff. There are more vocally luxurious performances out there, but I still prefer the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the pianist Alfred Brendel for their stylish refinement and unflagging attention to musical and literary details. Their ''Dichterliebe'' is rawer and more hard-edged, but equally worthy.
When it comes to the big piano works, Sviatoslav Richter is utterly convincing in the C major Fantasy, conjuring both Classical nobility and Romantic ardor in all the right proportions, and with a breathtaking palette of colors. And Ms. Argerich tears into the A minor Piano Concerto with all the combustible virtuosity that her fans have come to expect. Both discs come with added incentives: the violinist Gidon Kremer's eloquent plea for the obscure Schumann Violin Concerto and Richter's dazzling ''Faschingsschwank aus Wien.''
A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul By JAMES R. OESTREICH
THE music of Robert Schumann (1810-56) is something of a litmus test for performers. Quite simply, it tends to attract the finest, the most musical.
There are no easy effects in his music. Although many of his works offer technical challenges, they are not of the sort likely to wow audiences in and of themselves. Even in his concertos, there is little room for empty virtuosity. But lyricism is everywhere, and it works like catnip on musicians with real soul.
Still, the deep-seated affection of some is not always matched by a profound respect from all. It is easy to condescend to Schumann, to discount his stunning originality by attributing it in part to the meanderings of a mind addled by syphilis. A master of the miniature, he had relatively little success in large-scale ventures. His theatrical works and big choral pieces are little known. Even his symphonies have long been faulted for a perceived murkiness in orchestration and texture.
Yet those symphonies seem to be everywhere at the moment. Kurt Masur leads the New York Philharmonic in the Third this weekend in Purchase, N.Y., and at Avery Fisher Hall. Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin perform all four at Carnegie Hall next week in concerts that also include the concertos and other works. Teldec, meanwhile, has released recordings of the symphonies by Mr. Barenboim and the Staatskapelle.
All this comes just a season after Wolfgang Sawallisch presented the four symphonies with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie. And that orchestra has since released its own recordings of the symphonies.
With this impetus, the classical music critics of The New York Times are encouraging a closer listen to Schumann generally, with recommendations of favorite CD's. Their selections are on Page 28.
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
SYMPHONIES (4), VIOLIN CONCERTO, ANDANTE AND VARIATIONS. Leonidas Kavakos, violinist; Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor and pianist; others; Philadelphia Orchestra (with Clara Schumann songs, sung by Thomas Hampson; Philadelphia Orchestra; three CD's).
PIANO QUINTET, PIANO QUARTET IN E FLAT. Menahem Pressler, pianist; Emerson String Quartet (Deutsche Grammophon 445 848-2).
STRING QUARTETS NOS. 1 AND 3. Zehetmair Quartet (ECM New Series 1793).
VIOLIN SONATAS NOS. 1 AND 2. Gidon Kremer, violinist; Martha Argerich, pianist (Deutsche Grammophon 419 235-2).
''DAS PARADIES UND DIE PERI,'' ''REQUIEM FÜR MIGNON,'' ''NACHTLIED.'' Barbara Bonney, soprano; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; others; Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Deutsche Grammophon Archiv 289 457 660-2; two CD's).
I DON'T get it: this eternal carping about unimaginative orchestration and awkward voice-leading in Schumann's symphonies. These ebullient creations are what they are, and they work for me every time -- in a good performance, that is.
At the moment, I'm particularly fond of Wolfgang Sawallisch with the Philadelphia Orchestra in performances recorded live last season and repeated at Carnegie Hall. There is nothing here either lightweight or heavy-handed, and the freshness of Mr. Sawallisch's approach is all the more remarkable given the parlous state of his health over the last year; the Second was recorded late in the season, and he began canceling appearances soon after. The ''Spring'' Symphony performance is a special treasure, quite possibly addictive. Mr. Sawallisch, a superb pianist, is heard in that role in a chamber work, the Andante and Variations, and in songs by Clara Schumann.
In advance, Teldec has issued a memento of another Carnegie series: Daniel Barenboim's with the Staatskapelle Berlin next week. I find these interpretations of the symphonies less persuasive at first hearing, a little fussy and studied in their pushings and pullings. But I'm eager to hear whether those gestures and others might sound more spontaneous in the Carnegie concerts.
An enduring favorite among the symphonies is Christoph von Dohnanyi's set with the Cleveland Orchestra on Decca. In some ways, this orchestra -- lithe, clear and precise -- has long been an ideal Schumann instrument, whether led by George Szell, Mr. Dohnanyi or, presumably, the relative newcomer Franz Welser-Möst. (The Szell recordings on Sony are also classics.) The orchestra's virtues are most apparent in the mercurial scherzo of the Second Symphony, which Mr. Dohnanyi liked to carry in his trunk as an encore.
Although Schumann's chamber music also comes in for some carping, the Piano Quintet is almost universally recognized as a masterpiece. To the worthy renditions cited elsewhere on this page, I will add the collaboration between Menahem Pressler and the Emerson String Quartet. These are all chamber musicians of abundant gifts, wide experience and distinctive styles, and it is fascinating to hear the musical ground shift between Mr. Pressler's relative mellowness and the Emerson's characteristic fire: a scintillating mix.
In music that does not strain to sell itself, fire is often a good thing; conviction is essential. Those qualities pervade the other chamber discs listed here as well. The Zehetmair Quartet's performances make a persuasive case for two of Schumann's string quartets, especially the First, as masterworks. Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich cannot do as much with the slighter material of two violin sonatas, but their urgent performances make the works sound eminently respectable and, more important, appealing.
Veering way off the beaten path, John Eliot Gardiner offers lovely performances of three Schumann choral pieces dripping with good tunes.
''Das Paradies und die Peri'' is a large-scale work in three parts, and though it cannot be said that the drama is maintained consistently, each part builds to a compelling finale. The melting lullaby that ends the second part is itself worth the price of a disc, maybe both.
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By JOHN ROCKWELL
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
''KREISLERIANA.'' Hélène Grimaud, pianist (with Brahms's Piano Sonata No. 2; Denon CO-73336).
PIANO QUINTET. Arthur Rubinstein, pianist; Guarneri Quartet (with Brahms's Piano Quintet; RCA Red Seal 09026-5669-2).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 24), SONGS. Ian Bostridge, tenor; Julius Drake, pianist (EMI Classics 5 56575 2).
SYMPHONIES (4). Staatskapelle Berlin, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (Teldec 2564 61179-2; two CD's).
''SCENES FROM GOETHE'S 'FAUST.' '' Bryn Terfel, Karita Mattila and other soloists; Tölzer Knabenchor, Swedish Radio Chorus, and Eric Ericson Chamber Chorus; Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado (Sony Classical S2K 66308; two CD's).
THIS selection of favorite Schumann recordings is not based on exhaustive comparisons of every performance of every masterpiece. That way lies madness. (Of course, some might argue that it's already kind of mad to own 25 different performances of the ''Rhenish'' Symphony, some in multiple formats.) So my choices are based partly on memory and nostalgia, although, to 'fess up, I did do some semi-exhaustive relistening. I have chosen one recording in each musical genre.
Schumann is best known as a composer for the piano. I've long had a weak spot for the playing of Hélène Grimaud, especially in German repertory. Her recording of ''Kreisleriana,'' coupled with Brahms's Sonata No. 2 (everyone couples Schumann and Brahms, for biographical as well as musical reasons), made when she was only 19, combines rangy technique, vivid personality and a rich sense of the Romantic performance tradition.
Schumann's chamber music often involves the piano. Arthur Rubinstein's recording of the Piano Quintet in E flat with the Guarneri Quartet, besides being a magisterial performance, is also a tribute to Rubinstein's many superb Schumann recordings, so influential in shaping my tastes.
The eight-volume series of complete Schumann songs on Hyperion belongs in every serious collector's library. But for a single disc, I would choose Ian Bostridge's grouping of the Opus 24 ''Liederkreis,'' ''Dichterliebe'' and seven other songs, handsomely accompanied by Julius Drake. Mr. Bostridge has an ethereal tenor, sometimes so silvery and hushed that you're almost embarrassed by the intimacy. But he can rise to the bolder, more despairing songs, like ''Ich Grolle Nicht,'' too. A remarkable disc.
Schumann's orchestral music is also wonderful, despite all the controversies that have surrounded his orchestration: thick and inept, or rich and Romantic? I tend toward the latter, but there have been wonderful performances in all styles and all kinds of instrumentation. As much as I regret not including Arturo Toscanini's fulminating account of the ''Manfred'' Overture, I will stick with the symphonies.
For decades I preferred Leonard Bernstein's raw, impassioned performances with the New York Philharmonic (better than his later, slicker versions with the Vienna Philharmonic). I love them still, but Daniel Barenboim's new set with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the same group he will lead in Schumann at Carnegie Hall next week, is wonderfully lyrical and idiomatic, and in superb sound as well. It's way better than his earlier set with the Chicago Symphony.
Finally, large-scale, quasi-operatic, quasi-oratorio effusions: Schumann could imbue his instrumental music and songs with plenty of drama, but like some other great composers, he never found his footing in opera. Still, his ''Scenes From Goethe's 'Faust,' '' in a sumptuous recording from Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic and a remarkable roster of singers, must be on the list. And even if the work falls short of counterparts by Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod and Mahler as an evocation of ''Faust,'' its seraphic beauties and contrapuntal rigor work wonderfully on their own terms.
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Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
''HUMORESKE,'' ''FANTASIESTÜCKE,'' ''NOVELLETTEN.'' Sviatoslav Richter, pianist (Melodiya 74321 29464 2).
FANTASY IN C, ''FASCHINGS-SCHWANK AUS WIEN,'' ''PAPILLONS.'' Sviatoslav Richter, pianist (EMI Classics 5 75233 2).
PIANO SONATA NO. 1, ''KREISLERIANA.'' Murray Perahia, pianist (Sony Classical SK 62786).
PIANO CONCERTO. Leif Ove Andsnes, pianist; Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Mariss Jansons (with Grieg's Piano Concerto; EMI Classics 5 57562 2).
ROBERT SCHUMANN never quite had a grip on reality. In his later life, his condition turned tragic. But even as a moody youth, he apparently spent whole days in some fantastical realm of his own invention.
Though it's dangerous to romanticize mental illness, one can't help thinking that Schumann's unhinged imagination, counterbalanced by a probing musical intellect, led to some of the Romantic era's most original music. The instrument that best served his needs in that exploratory early period was the piano. So though I adore Schumann's lieder and chamber works, I'll leave those genres to others and stick to the piano for some recommendations.
To experience how wonderfully strange Schumann's imagination could be, listen to the ''Humoreske.'' Some find it a rambling collection of indistinctly defined sections. I find it audaciously inventive, full of startling fits and turns. The opening section, a wistful tune with a softly rippling accompaniment, jumps right into a hypercharged dance that seems at once bumptious and terrifying.
Sviatoslav Richter's colossal performance, recorded in Moscow in 1956, is a landmark in the Schumann discography. Richter produces piano effects that might seem impossible. In a section marked ''Hastig'' (''Hurried''), for example, a restless right-hand pattern that faintly outlines a melody is supported by a chordal left-hand accompaniment. Schumann also adds a middle staff to the score for an ''Innere Stimme'' (''Inner Voice''), though in a footnote he explains that this voice is not to be played but simply ''read between the lines, as it were.'' Well, somehow, Richter plays it. By highlighting notes that are merely grazed by the right- and left-hand parts, he makes a hazy and unperturbed inner melody magically emerge from the texture.
If you have trouble finding this disc (it has also been released by BMG as part of a 10-CD set of Richter performances), you can certainly find Richter's enthralling 1962 recording of three other Schumann works, drawn from concert performances in Italy and reissued in 2002. The album begins with a sweepingly grand account of the Fantasy in C; despite its title, this is Schumann's most ingeniously structured score. There is also an ebullient version of ''Faschingsschwank aus Wien'' and, best of all, a mercurial ''Papillons,'' played with infectious innocence and sudden bursts of power in the stern march sections but not a trace of sentimentality.
Murray Perahia's 1997 recording of ''Kreisleriana,'' a sprawling suite of eight movements aptly subtitled ''Fantasies for Piano,'' beautifully balances the music's impetuosity and its refinement. But the marvel of this disc is Mr. Perahia's bracing account of the formidable First Sonata; his playing untangles the webs of counterpoint in a sprawling work that can easily sound dense and convoluted.
Finally, Leif Ove Andsnes's scintillating, lucid and lyrical recording of the Piano Concerto, with Mariss Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic, released last year, makes this repertory staple sound newly vibrant and important. It proves that Schumann could compose deftly structured compositions when he put his mind to it. Of course, his mind eventually had an agenda of its own.
January 16, 2004
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By ALLAN KOZINN
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
''CARNAVAL,'' ''FANTASIESTÜCKE'' (OP. 12), PIANO WORKS. Arthur Rubinstein, pianist (RCA Victor Red Seal 09026-63020-2).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 24), SONGS. Ian Bostridge, tenor; Julius Drake, pianist (EMI Classics 5 56575 2).
PIANO CONCERTO, PIANO QUINTET. Rudolf Serkin, pianist; Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy; Budapest String Quartet (Sony Classical MYK 37256).
STRING QUARTETS NOS. 1 AND 3. St. Lawrence String Quartet (EMI Classics 5 56797 2).
SYMPHONIES (4); ''MANFRED'' OVERTURE. Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by George Szell (Sony Classical MH2K 62349; two CD's).
WHETHER or not it was syphilis that drove Schumann mad, as musicologists have long argued, he was always a bit odd. He destroyed his career as a pianist by affixing weights to his fingers in hopes of strengthening them. He created fictional antagonists (Florestan and Eusebius) who carry on arguments in both his music and his essays. And his love life was a matter of intense fixations that led more than one father to put his daughter out of Schumann's way.
It is in his piano music that Schumann's peculiarities show up most vividly, and the work that offers the best view of his overheated imagination is ''Carnaval.'' Schumann was 24 when he began the work, and his infatuation with both Clara Wieck, his teacher's 13-year-old daughter (and eventually his wife), and Ernestine von Fricken, a 17-year-old fellow student, are documented in two of the work's movements. So are the poetic Eusebius and the fiery Florestan (who are fleshed out further in the ''Fantasiestücke''). Well-drawn tributes to Chopin and Paganini are included among the 21 vignettes, and the closing ''March of the Davidsbündler Against the Philistines'' is Schumann's argument for free-spirited originality in new music.
Rubinstein's monaural recordings from the late 1940's and early 50's have greater drive and directness than the stereo versions of the same works recorded in the 60's (available in Volume 51 of RCA's Rubinstein Edition), but you can't go far wrong with either. Rubinstein caught the almost cinematic drama of these pieces as well as the sheer beauty of their surfaces.
After the solo piano works, Schumann's songs offer the most direct window into his psyche, and the best are the ''Liederkreis'' and ''Dichterliebe'' cycles, settings of Heine poetry steeped in romantic yearning, outright rejection and other evocations of unrequited love. Sumptuous readings are plentiful, but Ian Bostridge's supple phrasing and careful coloration give the bitterness in these songs an almost visceral quality. Between the cycles, Mr. Bostridge offers seven more Heine songs as an attractive bonus.
Because the Piano Concerto is one of the great war horses, it can be difficult to hear fresh. But among the charms of Rudolf Serkin's account is the deftness with which he captures the music's grandeur and prevents it from sounding bombastic. Better still is the charged reading of the Piano Quintet, a collaboration with the Budapest String Quartet, recorded at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont in 1963.
Schumann's symphonies and string quartets are an acquired taste: in both cases, structural eccentricities suggest a lack of control rather than (as Beethoven's structural eccentricities do) willful iconoclasm. Yet in the right hands, they can sound like masterpieces. By finding the right balance between explosive tension and introspective warmth, the St. Lawrence players make the First and Third Quartets seem rational, even persuasive. George Szell does similarly for the symphonies, bringing to these bigger canvases the same quality of fully controlled, precise power that animates Serkin's reading of the concerto.
January 16, 2004
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul
By JEREMY EICHLER
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
PIANO QUINTET, CHAMBER WORKS. Martha Argerich, pianist; Nobuko Imai, violist; Mischa Maisky, cellist; others (EMI Classics 5 57308 2).
PIANO TRIO NO. 1. Alfred Cortot, pianist; Jacques Thibaud, violinist; Pablo Casals, cellist (with Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1; Naxos 8.110185).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 39). Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Alfred Brendel, pianist (Philips 416 352-2).
FANTASY IN C, ''FASCHINGS-SCHWANK AUS WIEN,'' ''PAPILLONS.'' Sviatoslav Richter, pianist (EMI Classics 5 75233 2).
PIANO CONCERTO, VIOLIN CONCERTO. Martha Argerich, pianist; Gidon Kremer, violinist; Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Teldec 4509-90696-2).
SCHUMANN was a capable symphonist, but it was the smaller-scale chamber works, solo piano music and lieder that best served his unique wedding of structure and emotion, rigor and rue. To feel his way into these creative worlds, he often relied on his first musical love, the piano, and we can thank an injury to a middle finger for the fact that he did not become a piano virtuoso himself and thus leave his greatest works unwritten. (We can also thank the primitive state of medicine at the time: Schumann's attempted therapies included bathing his finger in the entrails of a dead animal.)
At the core of his chamber output is the Piano Quintet, which epitomizes his gift for toggling between the pleasures of heart and mind. One might not expect a good recording from an ad hoc assembly of soloists but Martha Argerich and friends offer an exciting live rendition with driving rhythmic intensity, lush instrumental textures and an adrenaline-laced expressivity. More Schumann chamber music rounds out this disc, including the ''Märchenbilder,'' gracious miniatures for viola and piano, which receive a lovely reading by Ms. Argerich and Nobuko Imai.
My next pick hails from a distant sonic galaxy, far removed from the sleek modern sound and high-octane playing of Ms. Argerich and company. Indeed, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, the cellist Pablo Casals and the pianist Alfred Cortot made up a legendary ensemble from a much earlier era of music-making, and their famed performance of Schumann's D minor Piano Trio has a warm conversational quality, a dreamy legato phrasing and a mellow sweetness of tone unlike anything one finds today. The recording was made in the late 1920's, but all three musicians were born less than a quarter century after Schumann's death, and their playing maintains deep ties to the very Romantic tradition that the composer helped define. If you can listen through the inevitable surface noise, you will hear old-world Schumann at its most tender and beautiful.
Schumann's melancholic songs offer another perspective on his dark-hued genius, and in particular his keen sensitivity to the poetry and literature that so often inspired his work. Seldom is this more apparent than with the famous ''Liederkreis'' settings of the poetry of Joseph von Eichendorff. There are more vocally luxurious performances out there, but I still prefer the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the pianist Alfred Brendel for their stylish refinement and unflagging attention to musical and literary details. Their ''Dichterliebe'' is rawer and more hard-edged, but equally worthy.
When it comes to the big piano works, Sviatoslav Richter is utterly convincing in the C major Fantasy, conjuring both Classical nobility and Romantic ardor in all the right proportions, and with a breathtaking palette of colors. And Ms. Argerich tears into the A minor Piano Concerto with all the combustible virtuosity that her fans have come to expect. Both discs come with added incentives: the violinist Gidon Kremer's eloquent plea for the obscure Schumann Violin Concerto and Richter's dazzling ''Faschingsschwank aus Wien.''
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul By ANNE MIDGETTE
January 16, 2004
Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul By ANNE MIDGETTE
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
PIANO WORKS. Yves Nat, pianist (EMI Classics 7 67141 2; four CD's).
PIANO CONCERTO, INTRODUCTION AND ALLEGRO, PIANO WORKS. Sviatoslav Richter, pianist; Warsaw Philharmonic, conducted by Witold Rowicki and Stanislaw Wislocki (Deutsche Grammophon 447 440-2).
SYMPHONIES (4), OVERTURE, SCHERZO AND FINALE. Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (EMI Classics 5 67771 2; two CD's).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 24), SONGS (WITH WOLF SONGS). Gérard Souzay, baritone; Jacqueline Bonneau and Dalton Baldwin, pianists (Testament SBT 1314).
VOCAL DUETS, SONGS. Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Leslie Guinn, baritone; Gilbert Kalish, pianist (Nonesuch 971364-2).
FLORESTAN and Eusebius were two of his alter egos: the passionate artist and the ruminative intellectual. For Robert Schumann, trying on different masks was an artistic hallmark. As a young man, he debated whether to be a writer or a musician. When he opted for music, he composed in every style: songs and piano music, symphonies and requiems. A master of small musical thoughts -- the piano vignette, the intense lied -- he inflated them onto a grand scale, linking them in a cycle (''Kinderszenen,'' ''Dichterliebe'') or working a patchwork of motifs into a large edifice (the symphonies).
He sought originality. A defender of the old (Bach), he championed the new (from Chopin to Brahms) and explored the possibilities of each musical form in turn, redefining them in the process. Voice and piano meet as equals in his songs. New themes spring up at will in his symphonies, contravening classical convention. He is still hard to pin down.
The trick to putting Schumann's music across in performance is to capture its contradictions and mood swings without overemoting. So much is going on that excess can make the music simply turgid. The best performances seem to have in common a superb matter-of-factness, an absence of flashiness.
Take the French pianist Yves Nat, whose Schumann, even heard through the fuzz of 1939 monaural recordings, is simply and excellently present, explicated rather than expounded on. Nothing is overdone, yet nothing is omitted. And Schumann, who could be somewhat callow in his earnest experiments, suddenly appears pure sophistication.
Sviatoslav Richter is not exactly understated, but his Schumann playing has the same self-evident conviction, brilliance communicated with conversational ease. There is no better recording of the virtuosic, addictive Piano Concerto than his from 1958 for Deutsche Grammophon.
Perhaps appropriately, if Schumann needs restraint, one of the best Schumann conductors of our time is also one of the most underrated. Wolfgang Sawallisch recorded the symphonies last season before retiring as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. But his earlier set with the Dresden Staatskapelle has to my ear a touch more of the spark and Florestanian freshness to which this difficult music responds. ''Difficult'' because it is hard to guide the ear (or the player) through these symphonies, with their wealth of motifs and unaccustomed structures. Mr. Sawallisch has always had a special, intangible, audible understanding of them.
You could name five great recordings of Schumann's songs alone and not be done. But ''Dichterliebe,'' the cycle on poems by Heine, certainly belongs on the list, and from the aching quiet of the word ''Verlangen'' (''yearning'') in the first song, Gérard Souzay delivers a delicately pitched, restrained and strikingly beautiful account, with a flowing line in place of too-specific diction.
Schumann's duets, by contrast, are not a cornerstone of his repertory, but they show the composer taking a genre and working to claim it. And Jan DeGaetani's expressive artistry helps reveal pieces like ''In der Nacht'' as unclaimed jewels. It's hard, once you've found them, to put them down.
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Robert Schumann: A Tuneful Miniaturist With a Ton of Soul By ANNE MIDGETTE
Here are some favorite Schumann recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times. Availability is hard to determine in the current state of the market. Most of the recordings here can be found on Amazon.com or in major record stores. CD's range in price from $12.99 for one CD to $21.99 for a two-CD set and $40.99 for four CD's. (An introduction appears on Page 1 of Weekend.)
PIANO WORKS. Yves Nat, pianist (EMI Classics 7 67141 2; four CD's).
PIANO CONCERTO, INTRODUCTION AND ALLEGRO, PIANO WORKS. Sviatoslav Richter, pianist; Warsaw Philharmonic, conducted by Witold Rowicki and Stanislaw Wislocki (Deutsche Grammophon 447 440-2).
SYMPHONIES (4), OVERTURE, SCHERZO AND FINALE. Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (EMI Classics 5 67771 2; two CD's).
''DICHTERLIEBE,'' ''LIEDERKREIS'' (OP. 24), SONGS (WITH WOLF SONGS). Gérard Souzay, baritone; Jacqueline Bonneau and Dalton Baldwin, pianists (Testament SBT 1314).
VOCAL DUETS, SONGS. Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Leslie Guinn, baritone; Gilbert Kalish, pianist (Nonesuch 971364-2).
FLORESTAN and Eusebius were two of his alter egos: the passionate artist and the ruminative intellectual. For Robert Schumann, trying on different masks was an artistic hallmark. As a young man, he debated whether to be a writer or a musician. When he opted for music, he composed in every style: songs and piano music, symphonies and requiems. A master of small musical thoughts -- the piano vignette, the intense lied -- he inflated them onto a grand scale, linking them in a cycle (''Kinderszenen,'' ''Dichterliebe'') or working a patchwork of motifs into a large edifice (the symphonies).
He sought originality. A defender of the old (Bach), he championed the new (from Chopin to Brahms) and explored the possibilities of each musical form in turn, redefining them in the process. Voice and piano meet as equals in his songs. New themes spring up at will in his symphonies, contravening classical convention. He is still hard to pin down.
The trick to putting Schumann's music across in performance is to capture its contradictions and mood swings without overemoting. So much is going on that excess can make the music simply turgid. The best performances seem to have in common a superb matter-of-factness, an absence of flashiness.
Take the French pianist Yves Nat, whose Schumann, even heard through the fuzz of 1939 monaural recordings, is simply and excellently present, explicated rather than expounded on. Nothing is overdone, yet nothing is omitted. And Schumann, who could be somewhat callow in his earnest experiments, suddenly appears pure sophistication.
Sviatoslav Richter is not exactly understated, but his Schumann playing has the same self-evident conviction, brilliance communicated with conversational ease. There is no better recording of the virtuosic, addictive Piano Concerto than his from 1958 for Deutsche Grammophon.
Perhaps appropriately, if Schumann needs restraint, one of the best Schumann conductors of our time is also one of the most underrated. Wolfgang Sawallisch recorded the symphonies last season before retiring as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. But his earlier set with the Dresden Staatskapelle has to my ear a touch more of the spark and Florestanian freshness to which this difficult music responds. ''Difficult'' because it is hard to guide the ear (or the player) through these symphonies, with their wealth of motifs and unaccustomed structures. Mr. Sawallisch has always had a special, intangible, audible understanding of them.
You could name five great recordings of Schumann's songs alone and not be done. But ''Dichterliebe,'' the cycle on poems by Heine, certainly belongs on the list, and from the aching quiet of the word ''Verlangen'' (''yearning'') in the first song, Gérard Souzay delivers a delicately pitched, restrained and strikingly beautiful account, with a flowing line in place of too-specific diction.
Schumann's duets, by contrast, are not a cornerstone of his repertory, but they show the composer taking a genre and working to claim it. And Jan DeGaetani's expressive artistry helps reveal pieces like ''In der Nacht'' as unclaimed jewels. It's hard, once you've found them, to put them down.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505E3D81E30F935A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
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Monday, December 15, 2003
wine's world Le Divorce How wine and food have gone their separate ways. By Mike Steinberger
wine's world Le Divorce How wine and food have gone their separate ways. By Mike Steinberger
Posted Monday, Dec. 15, 2003, at 5:41 PM ET
After a long, amicable marriage, wine and food are heading for divorce. Big, syrupy wines are increasingly prevalent while the culinary world is increasingly smitten with an eclecticism that borders on the bizarre and the idea that more is always more (more ingredients per dish, more dishes per meal). Wine and food are moving in roughly the same direction—subtlety and finesse giving way to flash and bang—yet their paths are diverging, making it difficult to bring them together harmoniously at the table.
Take, for instance, the new-wave Australian shirazes and cabernets now washing ashore. Many of these wines taste like spiked blueberry milkshakes that have been blended with a two-by-four. (The oak is, shall we say, pronounced.) If your preference is for wines that leave elephant tracks on your tongue, you probably adore them. But if asked to drink, say, an Elderton shiraz alongside a roast leg of lamb, even those who enjoy these Jerry Bruckheimer-in-a-bottle wines will probably be reaching for the Maalox. These wines aren't fit to accompany meals—they are meals.
Likewise, today's most celebrated and influential chefs—Ferran Adria of Spain's El Bulli, Marc Veyrat of France's La Ferme de Mon Pere and Auberge de L'Eridan, Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, outside of London, to name the most renomme among them—have a wildly inventive approach that, whatever its virtues, falls a bit short when it comes to wine compatibility. What exactly do you pair with Adria's coconut ravioli in soy sauce or his Parmesan cheese ice cream sandwich? Hawaiian Punch and Yoo-hoo spring to mind. Haut Brion does not.
Pairing food and wine is, of course, a fraught subject, and many restaurant-goers get their innards in an uproar trying to find the Holy Grail of combinations. (A smirking sommelier hovering over the table doesn't help.) But who's to say what constitutes a food-and-wine faux pas? If you believe that pairing a portlike zinfandel with a wasabi-coated veal loin in a kumquat and foie gras foam is a masterstroke, that's between you and your stomach. I'm as punctilious as the next wine zealot, but when it comes to combining food and wine, I hang with the drink-and-let-drink crowd: If it works for you, it works. Never serve red wine with fish? Pinot noir is the perfect arm candy for grilled salmon.
To be sure, there are certain loose rules worth observing. If a wine is likely to have you muttering hosannas throughout the meal, the food ought to be kept relatively simple: A 1982 cheval blanc, for example, shouldn't have to share the stage with a slab of rich meat submerged in gravy. Above all, wine should make nice with food and vice versa. But since the food is usually the star attraction, the type of wine will generally be dictated by what's on the plate. Wines well-suited to food are elegant, restrained, even a little demure, and possessing of a good acidic backbone, vital to creating—pardon the '90s-ism—synergy at the table.
Yet this kind of wine is becoming harder to find. One reason is global warming. In just about every winemaking region, summers are getting hotter, which means riper grapes. The riper the grapes, the lower the wine's acidity and the higher its alcohol content. Nowadays, wines routinely tip the scale at 14 and 15 percent alcohol; toss in the jammy fruit—another consequence of excessive heat in the vineyard—and what you get are massive, brooding wines that snarl at any food that comes near.
This might seem a result to be avoided, but in fact many vintners want their wines overripe and over-the-top and so are leaving grapes on the vine longer—"maximum hang time," in vineyard-speak ("dude" optional)—pushing the extraction (i.e., squeezing as much color and tannins out of the grape skins as possible), soaking their wines in new oak, and generally doing everything they can to turn out cabernets and merlots that Make a Statement. This is particularly true in California and Australia, both of which pump out lots of high-alcohol wines that have the viscosity of motor oil.
Winemakers make these confections because there's a market for them, and it's easy to understand why: The wines are fruity, forward, and deliver a quick buzz. They are also popular within influential segments of the wine press, which is no accident—many of these behemoths are essentially pageant wines, designed to stand out in comparative tastings.
When a critic is sampling 60 to 100 wines in an afternoon, those that make the biggest impression are invariably the ones that, well, make the biggest impression. These are the wines with the most alcohol, the most extract, the most new oak, the most everything. Critics generally do their appraising in isolation—that is, without food—and do not include in their tasting notes any indication as to how a wine might fare with a meal. As a result, many wines with very limited dinner-table potential end up walking off with the laurels.
But the growing rift between food and wine cannot be pinned on the wine world alone; the culinary universe is also to blame. Any quibbling about the direction food is taking is invariably dismissed as reactionary, but this is not an argument against culinary progress. (Though whether Adria and Blumenthal and Veyrat represent culinary progress or are vividly demonstrating its limits is debatable.) Grant Achatz of Chicago's Trio shouldn't feel inhibited about serving sea urchin with frozen banana, puffed rice, and parsnip milk simply because the dish does not suggest a particular wine (or any wine, for that matter). But whether you label it surrealism, molecular gastronomy, fusion, or confusion, the trendiest cooking these days is not being done with wine in mind.
The problem is compounded by price-gouging. A 400 percent markup on wines is not only a genteel form of pickpocketing, it creates a situation in which people who are not wealthy or eating on the company's dime find themselves forced to bottom-feed. This is no hardship if a restaurant has put thought and care into its bargain selections, but that's seldom the case, so the budget-conscious diner ends up eating a Rolls Royce meal and drinking a rent-a-wreck wine. Many restaurant-goers, by necessity, simply stop thinking of wine as part of the dining experience.
Restaurant critics, like their wine-reviewing brethren, deserve some of the blame, too. Most food critics don't seem to know or care much about wine, and they evidently assume their readers don't either. When was the last time you read a restaurant review that devoted even a sentence to the wine list? The last time a restaurant critic complained about wine prices? If restaurants got slapped around in the press for peddling plonk or overcharging on wine, they would surely make their wine lists more interesting and affordable, and wine would once again be a full partner at the table.
Of course, there remain plenty of wines, nearly all of them from "Old" Europe—Burgundies, Barolos, Champagnes, German Rieslings, Loires, Rhones, Bordeaux (albeit in dwindling numbers)—that play well with food, and not every chef is combining ingredients the way a 3-year-old combines finger paints. But when fireworks, in the glass and on the plate, is considered the highest virtue, few winemakers and chefs feel they can eschew the pyrotechnics and win critical acclaim.
But as challenging as pairing food and wine has become, there are harder matches to make—like wine and Botox. A participant in one of the more popular wine chat rooms recently reported bumping into a neighbor who was planning a Botox party and looking for some wine recommendations. Among the suggestions in the chat room: a Martinelli zinfandel—specifically, a zinfandel from the winery's Jackass Vineyard. Now that's a perfect match.
Mike Steinberger is Slate's wine columnist. He can be reached at slatewine@gmail.com.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092511/
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2092511
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Posted Monday, Dec. 15, 2003, at 5:41 PM ET
After a long, amicable marriage, wine and food are heading for divorce. Big, syrupy wines are increasingly prevalent while the culinary world is increasingly smitten with an eclecticism that borders on the bizarre and the idea that more is always more (more ingredients per dish, more dishes per meal). Wine and food are moving in roughly the same direction—subtlety and finesse giving way to flash and bang—yet their paths are diverging, making it difficult to bring them together harmoniously at the table.
Take, for instance, the new-wave Australian shirazes and cabernets now washing ashore. Many of these wines taste like spiked blueberry milkshakes that have been blended with a two-by-four. (The oak is, shall we say, pronounced.) If your preference is for wines that leave elephant tracks on your tongue, you probably adore them. But if asked to drink, say, an Elderton shiraz alongside a roast leg of lamb, even those who enjoy these Jerry Bruckheimer-in-a-bottle wines will probably be reaching for the Maalox. These wines aren't fit to accompany meals—they are meals.
Likewise, today's most celebrated and influential chefs—Ferran Adria of Spain's El Bulli, Marc Veyrat of France's La Ferme de Mon Pere and Auberge de L'Eridan, Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, outside of London, to name the most renomme among them—have a wildly inventive approach that, whatever its virtues, falls a bit short when it comes to wine compatibility. What exactly do you pair with Adria's coconut ravioli in soy sauce or his Parmesan cheese ice cream sandwich? Hawaiian Punch and Yoo-hoo spring to mind. Haut Brion does not.
Pairing food and wine is, of course, a fraught subject, and many restaurant-goers get their innards in an uproar trying to find the Holy Grail of combinations. (A smirking sommelier hovering over the table doesn't help.) But who's to say what constitutes a food-and-wine faux pas? If you believe that pairing a portlike zinfandel with a wasabi-coated veal loin in a kumquat and foie gras foam is a masterstroke, that's between you and your stomach. I'm as punctilious as the next wine zealot, but when it comes to combining food and wine, I hang with the drink-and-let-drink crowd: If it works for you, it works. Never serve red wine with fish? Pinot noir is the perfect arm candy for grilled salmon.
To be sure, there are certain loose rules worth observing. If a wine is likely to have you muttering hosannas throughout the meal, the food ought to be kept relatively simple: A 1982 cheval blanc, for example, shouldn't have to share the stage with a slab of rich meat submerged in gravy. Above all, wine should make nice with food and vice versa. But since the food is usually the star attraction, the type of wine will generally be dictated by what's on the plate. Wines well-suited to food are elegant, restrained, even a little demure, and possessing of a good acidic backbone, vital to creating—pardon the '90s-ism—synergy at the table.
Yet this kind of wine is becoming harder to find. One reason is global warming. In just about every winemaking region, summers are getting hotter, which means riper grapes. The riper the grapes, the lower the wine's acidity and the higher its alcohol content. Nowadays, wines routinely tip the scale at 14 and 15 percent alcohol; toss in the jammy fruit—another consequence of excessive heat in the vineyard—and what you get are massive, brooding wines that snarl at any food that comes near.
This might seem a result to be avoided, but in fact many vintners want their wines overripe and over-the-top and so are leaving grapes on the vine longer—"maximum hang time," in vineyard-speak ("dude" optional)—pushing the extraction (i.e., squeezing as much color and tannins out of the grape skins as possible), soaking their wines in new oak, and generally doing everything they can to turn out cabernets and merlots that Make a Statement. This is particularly true in California and Australia, both of which pump out lots of high-alcohol wines that have the viscosity of motor oil.
Winemakers make these confections because there's a market for them, and it's easy to understand why: The wines are fruity, forward, and deliver a quick buzz. They are also popular within influential segments of the wine press, which is no accident—many of these behemoths are essentially pageant wines, designed to stand out in comparative tastings.
When a critic is sampling 60 to 100 wines in an afternoon, those that make the biggest impression are invariably the ones that, well, make the biggest impression. These are the wines with the most alcohol, the most extract, the most new oak, the most everything. Critics generally do their appraising in isolation—that is, without food—and do not include in their tasting notes any indication as to how a wine might fare with a meal. As a result, many wines with very limited dinner-table potential end up walking off with the laurels.
But the growing rift between food and wine cannot be pinned on the wine world alone; the culinary universe is also to blame. Any quibbling about the direction food is taking is invariably dismissed as reactionary, but this is not an argument against culinary progress. (Though whether Adria and Blumenthal and Veyrat represent culinary progress or are vividly demonstrating its limits is debatable.) Grant Achatz of Chicago's Trio shouldn't feel inhibited about serving sea urchin with frozen banana, puffed rice, and parsnip milk simply because the dish does not suggest a particular wine (or any wine, for that matter). But whether you label it surrealism, molecular gastronomy, fusion, or confusion, the trendiest cooking these days is not being done with wine in mind.
The problem is compounded by price-gouging. A 400 percent markup on wines is not only a genteel form of pickpocketing, it creates a situation in which people who are not wealthy or eating on the company's dime find themselves forced to bottom-feed. This is no hardship if a restaurant has put thought and care into its bargain selections, but that's seldom the case, so the budget-conscious diner ends up eating a Rolls Royce meal and drinking a rent-a-wreck wine. Many restaurant-goers, by necessity, simply stop thinking of wine as part of the dining experience.
Restaurant critics, like their wine-reviewing brethren, deserve some of the blame, too. Most food critics don't seem to know or care much about wine, and they evidently assume their readers don't either. When was the last time you read a restaurant review that devoted even a sentence to the wine list? The last time a restaurant critic complained about wine prices? If restaurants got slapped around in the press for peddling plonk or overcharging on wine, they would surely make their wine lists more interesting and affordable, and wine would once again be a full partner at the table.
Of course, there remain plenty of wines, nearly all of them from "Old" Europe—Burgundies, Barolos, Champagnes, German Rieslings, Loires, Rhones, Bordeaux (albeit in dwindling numbers)—that play well with food, and not every chef is combining ingredients the way a 3-year-old combines finger paints. But when fireworks, in the glass and on the plate, is considered the highest virtue, few winemakers and chefs feel they can eschew the pyrotechnics and win critical acclaim.
But as challenging as pairing food and wine has become, there are harder matches to make—like wine and Botox. A participant in one of the more popular wine chat rooms recently reported bumping into a neighbor who was planning a Botox party and looking for some wine recommendations. Among the suggestions in the chat room: a Martinelli zinfandel—specifically, a zinfandel from the winery's Jackass Vineyard. Now that's a perfect match.
Mike Steinberger is Slate's wine columnist. He can be reached at slatewine@gmail.com.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092511/
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2092511
null
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Meet the Greedy Grandparents Why America's elderly are so spoiled. By Steve Chapman
politics
Meet the Greedy Grandparents Why America's elderly are so spoiled. By Steve Chapman
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003, at 11:16 AM ET
When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.
America's elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America's elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.
They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn't have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren't many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It's not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.
That's on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government's many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they'll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that's before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it's not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.
It's surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons—it's now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington's fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what's hit them.
Boomers have gotten our way ever since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence. We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn't. On top of that, we're used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren't dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain't seen nothin' yet.
But responsible middle-aged sorts may yet be brought to their senses when they realize that their usual impulse to get all they can will sooner or later collide with another boomer obsession: the insatiable desire to furnish our kids with every advantage known to humanity. Load Social Security with more obligations than it can bear, and our precious offspring will be squashed under the weight. To fund all the obligations of the Social Security system, payroll taxes will have to more than double by 2040—on top of whatever it costs to buy all those prescription drugs. At that point, our children will realize the trick we've pulled and start to hate our guts. That would be a cruel blow to a generation that thinks of itself as the most wonderful parents in history.
To avoid that fate, boomers need to recognize the need to stop writing checks that today's youngsters will have to cash. With the eager help of our own parents, we've created an entitlement that is fast becoming unaffordable. To bring Social Security into conformity with reality, we'll have to resign ourselves to a higher retirement age reflecting our prospective vigor and life expectancy. We'll have to accept more stringent controls on Medicare spending and take more responsibility for our own medical needs. We'll have to abandon our assumption that the point of the health-care system is to keep each of us alive forever. At some point—don't worry, not anytime soon—we will have to embrace a duty to stop functioning as a fiscal burden on our children and start serving as a nutritional resource for worms.
Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092302/
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2092302
null
Meet the Greedy Grandparents Why America's elderly are so spoiled. By Steve Chapman
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003, at 11:16 AM ET
When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.
America's elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America's elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.
They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn't have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren't many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It's not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.
That's on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government's many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they'll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that's before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it's not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.
It's surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons—it's now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington's fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what's hit them.
Boomers have gotten our way ever since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence. We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn't. On top of that, we're used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren't dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain't seen nothin' yet.
But responsible middle-aged sorts may yet be brought to their senses when they realize that their usual impulse to get all they can will sooner or later collide with another boomer obsession: the insatiable desire to furnish our kids with every advantage known to humanity. Load Social Security with more obligations than it can bear, and our precious offspring will be squashed under the weight. To fund all the obligations of the Social Security system, payroll taxes will have to more than double by 2040—on top of whatever it costs to buy all those prescription drugs. At that point, our children will realize the trick we've pulled and start to hate our guts. That would be a cruel blow to a generation that thinks of itself as the most wonderful parents in history.
To avoid that fate, boomers need to recognize the need to stop writing checks that today's youngsters will have to cash. With the eager help of our own parents, we've created an entitlement that is fast becoming unaffordable. To bring Social Security into conformity with reality, we'll have to resign ourselves to a higher retirement age reflecting our prospective vigor and life expectancy. We'll have to accept more stringent controls on Medicare spending and take more responsibility for our own medical needs. We'll have to abandon our assumption that the point of the health-care system is to keep each of us alive forever. At some point—don't worry, not anytime soon—we will have to embrace a duty to stop functioning as a fiscal burden on our children and start serving as a nutritional resource for worms.
Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092302/
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2092302
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