The death of this great conductor was announced today.
I remember a time when Mahler and Bruckner were pretty well unsung. Haitink contributed mightily to their emergence from obscurity in the 1960s.
I saw him conduct his second to last performance in Lucerne, Switzerland in August, 2019. Mahler No. 4 and it was the best performance I have heard of that work. He was visibly frail with a cane, but his knowledge of the piece was high and his interpretation could not have been surpassed. Perhaps the fact that he was about to retire enabled him to give such an emotional rendition. His work will be remembered and his presence missed.
(https://www43.online-convert.com/dl/web7/download-file/538de66e-d465-48a0-8846-c04acd8fd302/1D1548BD-CFD6-42EE-9F35-0DFB24B0CD95.jpg)
Arguably the most boring conductor of all time...
Boring how?
His repertoire also included a number of unsung composers (not all of them 100% guaranteed certified Romantic, though. Eg, Hendrik Andriessen and Egon Wellesz.)
(If someone wants to argue with me that those two composers are actually -sung-, not just outside of our remit for other reasons, I admit to being flubbergusted :) )
Arguably the most self-effacing of conductors. A great man.
QuoteArguably the most boring conductor of all time...
De mortuis nil nisi bonum. That's what I was always taught.
In principle, yes. But in fact it is quite strange to read everywhere how great he was, when really everybody found his conducting very boring and nobody liked his "interpretations" (he even succeeded in making Shostakovich's Eight (!) dull - I never had this problem with any of his colleagues). He simply wasn't a good conductor and there is no reason to claim this now, just because he is gone. That's it.
Provably false.
(what do people here think of his RVW cycle for EMI, by the way?)
Boring? That's very very rude. Musicians of the KCO and the Dutch RSO loved him, and they did in Dresden, London, Vienna, Luzern, Chicago, Berlin.
Friendly and humble conductors loved by musicians are very often not conductors loved by audiences.
Quotereally everybody found his conducting very boring and nobody liked his "interpretations"
As Eric said - provably false. I for one found him wise, sane and balanced. So did many. The finest performance I've ever heard of Schubert 9 was under his baton at the Proms a couple of years ago. It had all those characteristics and a fire that quite surprised me.
One of Haitink's achievements was not to try to 'interpret' at all, but to let the music speak for itself. In this respect he was the opposite of many conductors old and new who tried/try to interpose themselves between the music and the audience. Admittedly, this could leave him open to the charge of being boring, but this was to confuse his restrained platform manner with the results he obtained. It was actually a very superficial criticism. It still is.
QuoteFriendly and humble conductors loved by musicians are very often not conductors loved by audiences.
Really? Haitink was loved by both musicians
and audiences. Again, provably false - try the end of Bruckner 7 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMH8AgprRcY He was clearly greatly admired - and LOVED. There are countless examples of this on YouTube.
Shy, quiet, reserved does not equal boring. Anyone who watched the recent television profile on Bernard Haitink, will have learnt that about the man. I see mention of his RVW cycle. I have listened to many performances of RVW Symphony No. 5, and to my ears Haitink's performance surpasses all. There is a quietness about the man, which spills over into his conducting in all the passages that gain from that approach, although he can imbue a performance with passion and urgency when appropriate.
He was deeply and personally affected by the war years, which no doubt helped shape his demeanour.
Particularly in his later years, he was adored by orchestras and audiences alike.
Agreed! This is LOVE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_VfPtH4YkA
Well said, tappell.
I think he also shone in Shostakovich, perhaps evidence of a temperamental and personal affinity. He was the last of the great conductors who shaped the musical tastes of my generation.
We still have Herbert Blomstedt...
We do indeed. And he's a treasure, to be sure.
While I wouldn't call Haitink "boring", I don't see anything wrong in acknowledging the fact that his approach had become rather old-fashioned. Which, for a conductor standing in the tradition of Mengelberg and Van Beinum, and raised while Karajan was king, isn't all that strange. Let's not forget that the KCO was expressly brought into the world to focus on a flawless reproduction of the "greats". And I think in that sense, he was the perfect conductor for the KCO. There is a lot to love: I witnessed a phenomenal Mahler 8th (the only time I've really liked that work), there's a stellar Alpensymphonie, and he left behind a very good set of Bruckners.
The flip side is that this focus, and Haitink's eye for detail, could go at the expense of spontaneity; and he sometimes found it difficult to handle music outside of the (for the KCO) standard Austro-German fare. His Shostakovich 13 on Philips is a case in point: there's nothing technically wrong with it, but at no point do you feel the pain that Yevtushenko's poem and Shostakovich's symphony sought to convey: it's all just a bit too smooth. Also, a "light" approach wasn't really his thing: his Beethoven, for instance, can be rather on the heavy side. But the biggest issue of his recorded legacy, perhaps, is that his style was never particularly distinctive; you won't find a whole lot of Haitink recordings in people's Desert Island Disc set, I think.
Having said that, and perhaps because of this relative lack of profile, he was a fantastic operatic conductor, and I feel that once in London - and liberated of that Concertgebouw legacy - he did his best work.
I must say that I agree with Ilja's sentiments, and I don't think they take anything away from a properly glowing appreciation of the man and his music making. I've treasured my old Philips CD set of him conducting the Concertgebuow in the Brahms symphonies, and for me it's still the gold standard, but over the years I've also supplemented it with readings from conductors who have offered less perfect overall but, perhaps, more intermittently exciting or revelatory performances.
Haitink stood in the unfussy tradition of van Beinum - far removed from the idiosyncratic and wilful Mengelberg. He was very different from Karajan in his utter lack of interest in 'image' (I'm a huge HvK fan, btw).
I'm not sure that it's correct to call his approach 'old-fashioned'. In respect of the classics I'd call it 'central' - and in his later years he was even open to conducting a chamber orchestra in Beethoven. Try this for real fizz (especially in the finale):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFbjDP_qKYY
And for once I totally agree with David Hurwitz: his Bizet Symphony in C is just the best ever. Never heard it?>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xk7TVPyboY
No-one's perfect, of course. In Mahler I prefer a more 'dynamic' approach, but in Bruckner he could be sublime. His late VPO 7th is one for the ages.
That Bizet, to me, supports what I tried to say: that while Haitink is always solid, he's rarely that distinctive. It's a fine reading, but in spite of what Hurwitz might say I wouldn't call it exceptional (and when pressed I'd say that the adagio is taken too slowly, as well).
When I'm speaking of the KCO tradition, I'm not so much referring to interpretation but primarily to a certain kind of repertoire, combined with an emphasis on the craft of musicianship. By the way, Haitink's reputation wasn't quite as "unfussy" as Van Beinum's - he could be quite temperamental.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm not sure that Haitink strove to be 'distinctive' so much as 'faithful'. As regards van Beinum, I'm thinking of the recordings I have of him which are 'straightforward' in the best sense of the word.
Anyway, let's leave it at that.