1st Addition: Finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony (added at the end)
2nd Addition: the Adagio of the Shostakovich Seventh Symphony, plus texts for the Siegfried scene (now moved toward the end of the post) and for the Mahler songs -- and, oh yes, some blocks of text.
Final Addition: Note the "part 1" now appended to the post title. Rather than continue stuffing more stuff into this post, I decided it makes more sense to spin it off into a separate post. Prime exhibit: what we might call -- if we were the sort of person who was inclined to think in such terms -- "Haitink vs. Jochum, in Mahler and Bruckner." Of course it's not really a competition (and so, as Dave Letterman used to say, "No wagering!"). Nevertheless, the careers of these two important conductors, of decidedly different generations, intersected importantly in Amsterdam in the early 1960s. Among the exhibits (and helping plug the Bruckner gap so troubling in part 1 of this post): the Adagio from Haitink's first and last recordings, from September 1966 and June 2019, thus more than half a century apart, of the Bruckner Seventh Symphony.
Wait, One Post-Final Addition: a block of text explaining the inclusion of the Beethoven Ninth finale.
Now, back to business --
FIRST, SOME QUICK MUSICAL IMPRESSIONS OF B.H.
Haitink, who turned 92 in March, remained active up to the end [well, not quite the end; I note that he did a round of "farewell" performances in 2019 -- Ed.], and is reported to have died peacefully in his sleep on the 21st of this month. Not a fancy or excess-prone conductor, but a committed and sincerely musical one -- it was a heckuva career. HANDEL: Music for the Royal Fireworks:
i. Ouverture
Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, c1962
BRAHMS: Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102:
ii. Andante
Henryk Szeryng, violin; János Starker, cello; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, September 1970
SHOSTAKOVICH: The Age of Gold (ballet suite), Op. 22a:
iii. Polka: Allegretto
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, November 1979
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54:
iii. Presto
Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Decca, recorded in the Concertgebouw, December 1983
[NOTE: For those unfamiliar with the strange musical beast that is Shostakovich 6, it begins with a fairly long and quite lovely Largo -- worthy of Mahler, who has to have been on Shostakovich's mind -- and then dashes into a startlingly goofy Allegro that segues into this giddy, dare I say foot-stomping Presto, about the last thing we could have seen coming from that opening Largo. AFTERTHOUGHT: I'm thinking we ought to spend some time with Shostakovich 6, perhaps with some hindsight-driven wonder at its position in the otherworldly sequence of Shostakovich's Sixth through Ninth Symphonies.]
by Ken
After I'd been thinking for a while as to what music might go into a proper Haitink memorial, I thought I'd just take a peek in the DWT Archive. I had no idea how much there is there, so at this preliminary stage, before I've given much thought to making this a proper Haitink memorial post, I thought we might just listen to a small portion of music we've already heard from him, starting with another Brahms concerto slow movement, hearing how he adjusts to noticeably different sorts of soloist -- note how he's a little more assertive with Brendel, more supportive with the more self-starting Arrau (with whom, we might recall, Haitink had already recorded a cycle of the five Beethoven piano concertos).
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 83:
iii. Andante
Claudio Arrau, piano; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, October 1969
Alfred Brendel, piano; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, December 1973
And while we're following up on our opening selections, we might look at a very different side of Shostakovich from the jolly music we heard above: the searing Adagio of the Leningrad Symphony. Haitink, we might recall, recorded all 15 Shostakovich symphonies, split between the Concertgebouw and his beloved second orchestra, the London Philharmonic.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7 in C, Op. 60 (Leningrad):
iii. Adagio
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, 1979
OF COURSE WE'VE GOT MAHLER . . .
