One Sunday afternoon inAugust 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . .Part 1: The concert

The first page of the concert program from August 15, 1943

[New York Philharmonic Digital Archives]

by Ken

I claimed in the Sunday-into-Monday pre-post "Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?" that we would be undertaking "a sort of re-creation" of the August 1943 broadcast concert whose concluding work we heard in its entirety in that pre-post, and I mean the actual performance -- sent out into the airwaves from the stage of Carnegie Hall that Sunday afternoon. Believe it or not, that's just what we're going to do: our concert re-creation, followed by an assortment of, let's say, sidebars.

We're going to hear that performance again, this time properly identified, when we get to that place in the concert, following intermission -- if the word "intermission" can reasonably be applied to an interval specified in the program (as we'll see) as "5 MINUTES." The program, by the way, is just one of a trove of treasures now accessible to all in the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives, where we can also digitally thumb through the score marked up by Leonard Bernstein [right] when he performed and recorded the work in October 1963, early in the second season of Philharmonic Hall, the orchestra's acoustically challenged new Lincoln Center home.


WHILE IT'S ONLY FOR THE CONCERT'S FEATURED WORK . . .

Pre-post: Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?

LET'S PUT TOGETHER OUR OWN SYMPHONY!
(By juggling the movements of this 1943 broadcast performance)

(1)
Here's the thing in "traditional" fast-slow-fast configuration:
i. Allegro  || ii.  Largo [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:06]


(2)
Here, the short quick movements lead up to the big slow one:
i. Allegro  ||  ii. Presto [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Largo [at 14:02]


(3)
Or, start with the giant movement, then tack on the 'quickies':
i. Largo  ||  ii. Allegro [at 21:32]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:10]


by Ken

Haven't we all had the itch at some time to rejigger some or all of the movements of some symphony or other? Thinking, you know, that we can do a better assembly job than the person whose only authority was having composed the damned things?

This is basically what I've played at doing above, with a symphony that has the strangest structure of any I can think of from the pen of what I'm going to call a "serious symphonist," as anyone who approaches the piece for the first time is bound to notice quickly: three movements, with a slow movement that is considerably longer than the two fast movements put together. Many readers will recognize this symphony. For those who don't, I should disclose at the outset that in this "pre-post" I'm not going to disclose the identity of either the composer or the work -- a little experiment I'm hoping will be more interesting, even fun, for those who don't recognize the symphony. (For anyone who feels cheated, I would suggest that by pre-post's end, enough information will have been disclosed to enable online searchers to track the piece down in a minute or two.


BY CLICKING THROUGH TO THE PRE-POST
JUMP, THE READER WILL BE ABLE TO:

First, as promised, we're going to hear Bernard Haitink and Eugen Jochum conduct the Finale of Beethoven 9. Then we have to hear the first three movements, right?

aka "Bernard Haitink (1929-2021), part 3"
[Now updated to include the first three movements of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, plus a complete performance (from Tokyo!), with some additional additions still to come]

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; St. Hedwig's Cathedral Choir, Berlin Philharmonic, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Dec. 1957-Apr. 1958

Franz Crass, bass; Vienna Singverein, Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Live performance from the Vienna Musikvereinsaal, in the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival), June 6, 1960

René Pape, bass; New York Choral Artists, New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Live performance from Avery Fisher Hall, Dec. 31, 1999

Martti Talvela, bass; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, cond. Decca, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Singverein, Dec. 8-12, 1965

by Ken

Some you have seen the not-yet-a-post version of this maybe-still-not-really-much-of-a-post, containing just the five audio files of the Finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony as conducted by Bernard Haitink and Eugen Jochum, as promised in Part 2 of this series.

The series: Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)

Part 1 -- Haitink conducts Handel, assorted Brahms, assorted Shostakovich, very assorted Mahler, Wagner (from Act II of Siegfried), and Beethoven (Finale of Symphony No. 9)

Part 2 -- Haitink and Jochum conduct Bruckner: Symphony No. 7: ii. Adagio; and Haitink, Jochum, and van Beinum conduct Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde: i. "Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde" and vi. "Der Abschied" (both with "related" perforrmances involving other participants)

Part 3 -- multiple Haitink and Jochum performances of the Finale of Beethoven: Symphony No. 9

LET'S GET RIGHT TO THOSE FIVE PERFORMANCES --
THEN WE'VE GOT SOME NEW BUSINESS TO TEND TO

You've had the tease for the Finale, at the top of the post (I hope you enjoyed those four fairly different but all luscious performances!). Now it's time to hear that great bass solo in context.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iv. Finale: Presto -- Allegro assai -- etc.

Bernard Haitink (1929-2021),part 2

In 1961-63 Haitink's career path merged with Eugen Jochum's. We'll hear them side-by-side in Bruckner, and in Mahler side-by-side-by-side with their Concertgebouw predecessor Eduard van Beinum

HOLD EVERYTHING! We're going to need a "part 3," for a Haitink-Jochum Beethoven Ninth face-off: an anticipated five performances of the Finale ranging in time from 1938 to 2005 -- coming soon!

Bruckner in Vienna's Stadtpark (City Park) -- bronze bust by Viktor
Tilgner, crop of photo by Mealisland from Wikipedia Commons

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded Nov. 1-3 1966

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eugen Jochum, cond. Live performance, Mar. 3, 1970

Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded 1976

Orchestre National de France, Eugen Jochum, cond. Live performance from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Feb. 6, 1980

by Ken

Do you notice any progression in the four clips above, of what I'm calling the "main theme" of the second-movement Adagio of the Bruckner Seventh Symphony, even though it comes maybe half a minute into the movement? We could hear it as a continuation or branch of the opening theme, but in harmony and orchestration it seems so clearly a new, benedictory idea, and an idea of such physical power, intersecting with that opening theme that it seems to me clearly a second theme, and one of such power that it can only be the "main" theme, can't it?

The progression I'm thinking of happened fairly accidentally. It started with the Böhm clip, simply for convenience -- we've heard it before, so it was sitting in the SC Archive waiting to be called upon again, and indeed for a time it saved me from having to make a new clip. Except I felt guilty that it left us starting off without reference to the conductor we're remembering, or the conductor who's our secondary focus today. So I must have made first the 1966 Haitink clip and then, still feeling guilty, the 1970 Jochum one. And still I coudln't relinquish the Böhm clip, even though it seemed to have outlived its purpose and usefulness; the problem was that I like, I really like it. Eventually, many thousands of clips later, it seemed only natural to tack on the 1980 Jochum-in-Paris clip.

Okay, so this is part 2 of our remembrance of Bernard Haitink, who died peacefully in his sleep, we're told, on October 21, at the age of 92. Since he remained active through 2019, that leaves us a heap of remembering to do, and I thought we would start with a point I kept meaning to make last week, in "Bernard Haitink (1929-2021), part 1." In fact, we've got a subhead left over from the drafting of last week's installment, when I still imagined that all our Haitink remembering could get remembered in one fell swoop. This subhead was planned to be the first of a series of them; now it seems a good way to get us started on part 2.

(1) IT'S GREAT TO BE GOOD, BUT
IT'S ALSO SMART TO BE LUCKY

That's "lucky" as in, for example, being in the right place at the right time, which in Haitink's case meant being an up-and-coming young Dutch conductor at a time when a critical need arose for just such a commodity.

He'd had a formal relationship with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra since 1955, and been its principal conductor since 1957, when the Concertgebouw Orchestra's chief conductor, Eduard van Beinum [right], died suddenly (though his health seems to have been iffy for a long while) following a heart attack in April 1959, creating an urgent need for a Dutch conductor capable of taking the reins of what was not just the Netherlands' premiere orchestra but one of the world's elite ones. The 30-year-old Haitink was offered the position of "first conductor" (previously given in 1941-43 to a fellow name of . . . Eugen Jochum), but there was clearly still reluctance to elevate him to the chief conductorship. For the record, Van Beinum himself had served a period as "second conductor" to Mengelberg before being made co-chief conductor, remaining as sole chief in 1945 when the orchestra severed ties with Mengelberg over his overfriendliness with the Nazi occupiers. Van Beinum thankfully had an unimpeachable anti-Nazi record.


HAITINK FINALLY GOT HIS BUMP-UP, IN 1961,
BUT PROBABLY NOT THE WAY HE HAD HOPED