Saturday, November 6, 2021

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


In 1961 Haitink was made joint chief conductor with longtime Concertgebouw visitor Eugen Jochum [right] (who, remember, had served as first conductor in 1941-43), who was just completing a 12-year tenure as founding music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. It wasn't till the departure of Jochum (1902-1987, and so only two years younger than van Beinum), in 1963, that Haitink became sole chief conductor, and he remained on the job, through occasional strains and stresses, until 1988, even as he took on other positions -- principal conductor of the London Philharmonic (1967-1979), music director of Glyndebourne Opera (1978-88), and then, from 1987, music director of Covent Garden (till 2002). For what it's worth, when Haitink left, the Concertgebouw doesn't seem to have felt much need to find a Dutch replacement. His immediate successor were Riccardo Chailly (1988-2004) and Mariss Jansons (2004-15).

I don't know anything about the relationship, either professional or personal, between Haitink and Jochum, but whatever it was, the 32-year-old Haitink couldn't have asked for a more collegially inspirational example than his 26-year-older "partner": wholly engaged in the making of music, and as free as the profession permits from ego-driven showoffiness. In other words, very much the kind of musician Haitink developed into. Naturally I thought it might be fun to hear them overlap repertory with the Concertgebouw (if only because we can!), and in some repertory that's about as serious as it gets:

• Of Bruckner (a lifelong passion of Jochum's, and one for Haitink as well): the haunting second-movement Adagio of the Seventh Symphony, surely the composer's most beautiful creation.

• Of Mahler (not a passion of Jochum's, but a possibly-still-greater one for Haitink): the anchoring first and last movements of the song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), which is to say the opening song, the work's second-longest, for the tenor soloist, "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde" ("The Drinking Song of Earth's Despair"), and the sixth and final song, for the alto soloist, the half-hour "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell").


THE RECORDINGS (FINALLY!)
[BORINGLY REPETITIVE EDITOR'S NOTE: I have to point out yet again that, notwithstanding all the time and thought and energy that goes into the choosing, making, and incorporation of the audio clips, ever since Ga-Ga Google's last "improvement" of the Blogspot software, I've had no way of actually listening to the clips as they're meant to relate to one another until a blogpost is actually posted. So, while there are a lot of performance notes incorporated here, more may yet need to be added once it's possible for me to really hear what the clips in combination were meant to let us hear.]
(1) BRUCKNER

Symphony No. 7 in E: ii. Adagio. Sehr feierlich
und sehr langsam (Very solemn and very slow)


For Haitink, Bruckner 7 served as a frequent calling card. As he made his final rounds in 2019, live perfomances have circulated officially from Berlin (Berlin Philharmonic Recordings) and Salzburg (with the Vienna Philharmonic; Vienna Philharmonic Special Annual Edition 2020), in addition to the final Amsterdam performance (with the Netherlands Radio Phiharmonic) from which we do hear below.

For Jochum, Bruckner 7 served as a calling card through much of his career. One reason I've included performances with an assortment of orchestras is the feeling I've gotten from a lot of Jochum listening is that he never seemed to try to make the orchestra he was standing in front of sound the same, or like "his" orchestra. He seems rather to have enjoyed let each orchestra be itself while shaping a piece according to his own way of hearing it. I'm sorry not to have included his 1966 Berlin Philharmonic recording, which became part of the eventual DG stereo Bruckner symphony cycle, split between the Berlin Phil and his own Bavarian Radio Symphony. The Seventh, happily, was done in Berlin, and the Berlin Phil responded with its most glorious playing. I was almost sure I'd made a clip of the Adagio for post use, but it may have been a post that never happened.

At any rate, there's no such clip in the SC Archive, and the Seventh turned up missing from the Jochum-DG Bruckner box. Could it have gotten removed in contemplation of making an audio clip for that post-that-never-was? If so, where on earth did it wind up? (I do tend to get lazy about disc refilings, and this is what results. Still, it could be worse. When I first checked the Jochum-DG Bruckner box, it was missing not just Symphony No. 7 but No. 2 as well. However, on further investigation into possible misfilings, the Jochum No. 2 turned out to be hiding in the Günter Wand Bruckner-symphony box. (Now this I do remember, sort of: There was a post either about or including Bruckner 2, and I expect Jochum's recording came out of its rightful box to illustrate that post and then went -- well, I don't know where it went, do I?)


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

Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eugen Jochum, cond. Live performance from the Concertgebouw, Mar. 15, 1970

Now for what was apparently Haitink's last recording (of
his final concert in Amsterdam, with his old orchestra):


Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Challenge Classics, recorded live in the Concertgebouw, in Netherlands Radio's Saturday Matinee series, June 15, 2019

The Adagio from other Jochum Bruckner 7s:

Vienna Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. Telefunken, recorded May 8-9, 1935

Vienna Philharmonic, Eugen Jochum, cond. Live performance, June 9, 1974

Staatskapelle Dresden, Eugen Jochum, cond. EMI, recorded in the Lukaskirche, Dec. 11-14, 1976

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

QUICK PERFORMANCE NOTES: From Haitink, our selection suffers from my collector's sense that, going back a hearp of time, I haven't felt a need to keep up with all of his recorded-repertory repetitions. Still, it might have been nice to be able to consider his 1970 Concertgebouw remake. Also, I've never heard his 2007 Chicago Symphony recording (CSO Resound).


(2) MAHLER

Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
i. "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde"
("The Drinking Song of Earth's Misery")

vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")

As I noted above, for Jochum, unlike Haitink, Mahler was not a passion. In fact, he hardly touched it. And yet during his tenure as co-chief conductor of the Concertgebouw, an orchestra with a strong Mahler tradition dating back to the time of Mengelberg, he did make -- not for the orchestra's regular label, Philips, but for his, DG -- a lovely recording of Das Lied von der Erde, using the very same mezzo and tenor soloists, Nan Merriman and Ernst Häfliger, who'd taken part in Eduard van Beinum's 1956 Philips recording. Partly for that reason (these may be the same soloists, but they sound pretty different), and partly to take in the continuity of postwar Concertgebouw musical direction, although last week, when I thought this was all going to go into a single Haitink memorial post, I had specifically decided not to do this, with an extra week to ponder and listen, I've decided to add the van Beinum Das Lied to our little party.

VAN BEINUM BRUCKNER NOTE: It's reasonable to inquire why, if we tripled up with van Beinum on Mahler, we didn't do the same with Bruckner. He did, after all, record Bruckner 7 twice. The short answer is that I don't have access to either recording in digital form. (This is, by the way, the same reason I didn't "double up" last week with the finale of the Beethoven Ninth, of which I would have liked to set Jochum's Concertgebouw recording, from their complete Beethoven symphony cycle, alongside the Haitink-Concertgebouw version.* I thought I had it, but apparently I don't.) Beyond the issue of simple accessibility, I'm not sure the mediocre mono sound of the van Beinum Bruckner 7s would have allowed for much comparative play.
UPDATE: We're going to have this and more in the just-scheduled "part 3"! Five performances of the Finale of the Beethoven Ninth ranging from 1938 to 2005!
With regard to Jochum, maybe it's not as strange as it seems that a devout Bavarian (i.e., South German) Catholic might feel a powerful connection to the similarly devout Catholic from just over the border in Austria and apparently not much of a connection to the cosmopolitan, Jewish-born Mahler from the Slavic region of Central Europe. As noted, however, there was a Mahler tradition at the Concertgebouw handed from Mengelberg to van Beinum, and when Jochum and DG put Das Lied on the Concertgebouw recording schedule, it sounded like Jochum had been living with the music all his life.

SOME NOTES ON THE PERFORMANCES will appear after we've laid them all out for hearing. With specific regard for the non-Concertgebouw but "related" recordings: For anyone who cares about this music (and longtime readers will guess from the frequency with which we've returned to Das Lied that it's music I care about a whole lot), it's hard not to listen to these performances without reference to non-Concertgebouw recordings made by some of the same participants. Again, this will be a consideration in the post-hearing notes.


Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
i. "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde"
("The Drinking Song of Earth's Misery")

Now beckons the wine in the golden goblet,
but drink not yet, first I'll sing you a song!
The song of sorrow
shall in gusts of laughter through your souls resound.
When sorrow draws near,
wasted lie the gardens of the soul.
Withered and dying are joy and song.
Dark is life, is death.

Master of this house!
Your cellar holds its fill of golden wine!
Here, this lute I name my own!
To strike the lute and to drain the glasses,
these are the things that go together.
A full goblet of wine at the right time
is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
Dark is life, is death.

The firmament is blue eternally, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!

Look there, down there! In the moonlight, on the graves
squats a mad spectral figure!
It is an ape! Hear how his howling
screams its way through the sweet fragrance of life!

Now take the wine! Now it is time, companions!
Drain your golden goblets to the dregs!
Dark is life, is death!

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eduard van Beinum, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, Dec. 3-6, 1956

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded in the Concertgebouw, Mar.-Apr. 1963

James King, tenor; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, September 1975

Häfliger and King in other company:

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hans Rosbaud, cond. Live performance, Apr. 18, 1955

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Manhattan Center, Apr. 18 & 25, 1960

James King, tenor; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, April 1966

We start with the case of the Swiss tenor Ernst Häfliger, it's hard not to recall that in between the van Beinum and Jochum recordings, he was tapped by Bruno Walter and Columbia Masterworks for Walter's April 1960 New York Philharmonic recording of Das Lied, which again longtime readers may recall is one of my "foundational" Das Lied recordings.

While I appreciate the historical significance of the 1936 and 1953 recordings that EMI and Decca made with Walter [seen at left in his younger years] and the Vienna Philharmonic, I don't like them anywhere near as much as his 1960 New York Philharmonic one, which I dearly love. All the more remarkable in that Walter and Columbia had to find alternatives to the soloists from the live Philharmonic performances that were the occasion for the recording, since Maureen Forrester and Richard Lewis had just, some five months earlier, recorded Das Lied with Fritz Reiner in Chicago for RCA. Of course Forrester would have been wonderful, as she was in the Philharmonic concert broadcast, and let me make it clear that no Das Lied collection is complete without a Forrester performance; in addition to the Reiner-Chicago recording and the Walter-New York broadcast, I know of a 1967 Szell-Cleveland broadcast.)

Nevertheless, Forrester's New York studio replacement, Mildred Miller (born 1924), a fine mezzo who, as I mentione periodically, was the Rosina of the Barber of Seville that was my first Met performance, has always seemed to me one of the great recorded exponents of this music, deploying her fine moderate-weight mezzo so nicely and with such concentration as to not only mesh beautifully with what Walter is doing but to hold her own, in her own way, with the likes of Forrester, Christa Ludwig (all three recordings, where she makes herself the dream soloist of conductors as wildly different as Otto Klemperer, for EMI, Leonard Bernstein, for CBS, and Herbert von Karajan, for DG), and Jessye Norman (with Colin Davis, for Philips). If we put Miller in a "high second" category, we can accommodate some other splendid contenders -- Yvonne Minton (with Georg Solti in Chicago, for Decca) pops to mind. And Häfliger also meshes wonderfully with the spell Walter cast in New York.

Häfliger [right] is such a likably intelligent, pleasing-toned, and somehow engaging singer that I generally find him hard to resist, yet the four performances we're hearing here are pretty different from one another. Whether it was age catching up with him or just less-than-prime vocal condition, the Jochum-DG version does seem to stretch him more than the earlier ones. Conversely, in the van Beinum-Philips version the voice sounds noticeably fuller and freer -- and maybe darker as well. He and van Beinum don't seem to hear much of the no-doubt-drink-fueled bravado that usually raises the temperature of this remarkable song. When we think of a normal drinking song -- Alfredo and Violetta's "Libiamo" in Act I of La Traviata, say, or Turiddu's Brindisi as his terminal encounter with fait closes in on him in the final scene of Cavalleria rusticana, or Thomas's Hamlet's jolly chanson bacchique "O vin, dissipe la tristesse" -- we think normally of some kind of attempt at uplift.
VERDI: La Traviata: Act I, Alfredo and Violetta, "Libiamo, libiamo ne' lieti calici" (Brindisi)

Luciano Pavarotti (t), Alfredo Germont; Joan Sutherland (s), Violetta Valéry; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Richard Bonynge, cond. Live performance, Oct. 22, 1970

MASCAGNI: Cavalleria rusticana: Scene 2, Turiddu, "Viva il vino spumeggiante" (Brindisi)

Franco Corelli (t), Turiddu; Rome Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Gabriele Santini, cond. EMI, recorded in the Rome Opera House, 1962

THOMAS: Hamlet: Act II, Scene 1, Hamlet, "Ô vin, dissipe la tristesse" (Chanson bacchique)

Simon Keenlyside (b), Hamlet; Munich Radio Orchestra, Ulf Schirmer, cond. Sony, recorded at Bavarian Radio, May 29-June 2, 2006
Even in Mahler's deliriously twisted take on a drinking song I think we usually expect some of this exhilaration, or at least I do, and I'm accustomed to getting it -- along with the deep psychological slamdown. Here, instead, we're given the fullest representation I've ever heard of the personal torment expressed in the song. So is this Häfliger or van Beinum? This made me curious to go back another year, to Häfliger's 1955 performance with that fine jack-of-all-musical-trades Hans Rosbaud. No, I can't say I experienced this same phenomenon (thank goodness!), but it was interesting to hear Häfliger sounding fuller and perhaps even weightier in tone. Now I'm curious to dig out other recordings of Häfliger from this period earlier than I'm really familiar with, to see whether there may have been an actual change in the configuration of the voice.

At the other end of the tenor spectrum, we have in James King (1925-2005) the infrequent example of an actual Heldentenor tackling the tenor songs of Das Lied; more often we hear character tenors, who can more easily trace the music's tricky writing, though of course without producing the kind of tonal juice of the big voice Mahler seems clearly to have had in mind. While the first performance of Das Lied didn't happen until six months after the composer's death, he had been planning it, and entrusted the premiere to Bruno Walter, and the male soloist was the Dutch tenor Jacques Urlus (1867-1935), who sang a wide range of roles but was best known for the Wagner heavyweights. This acoustical recording of the Act I monologue of Siegmund -- King's most famous role -- would have found Urlus in his late 50s.
WAGNER: Die Walküre: Act I, Siegmund, "Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater" ("My father promised me a sword")
Jacques Urlus, tenor; with orchestra. Odeon, recorded in Berlin c1924 (digitized by jakej)
King hadn't yet turned 41 when he made his first recording of Das Lied, with Leonard Bernstein; he was three or four months past his 50th birthday when he made the recording with Haitink -- those are pretty important years in a singer's life, and we can hear the difference. The 50-year-old voice would have had a tough time keeping up with Bernstein's more dynamic, slashing approach but does a canny job in Haitink's more abstract framework.


Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")
The sun is going down behind the mountains.
In every valley evening is descending,
bringing its shadows, which are full of coolness.
O look! where like a silver bark afloat,
the moon through the blue lake of heaven soars upwards.
I sense the shivering of a delicate breeze
behind the dark fir trees.

The brook sings, full of melody, through the darkness.
The flowers grow pale in the twilight.
The earth is breathing, full of rest and sleep;
all desire now turns to dreaming.
Weary mortals wend homewards,
so that, in sleep, forgotten joy
and youth they may learn anew.
The birds huddle silent on the branches.
The world is falling asleep!

It blows cool in the shadow of my fir trees.
I stand here and wait for my friend.
I wait for him, to take the last farewell.
I long, O my friend, to be by your side,
to enjoy the beauty of this evening.
Where are you lingering? You leave me long alone!
I wander to and fro with my lute
on pathways that billow with soft grass.
O beauty! O eternal life- and love-intoxicated world!

Orchestral interlude

He alighted from his horse and handed him the drink
of farewell.
He asked him whither he was going,
and also why, why it had to be.
He spoke; his voice was veiled:
"You, my friend --
In this world fortune was not kind to me!
Whither I go? I go, I wander in the mountains,
I seek rest for my lonely heart!
I journey to the homeland, to my resting place;
I shall never again go seeking the far distance.
My heart is still and awaits its hour!

The dear earth everywhere
blossoms in spring and grows green again!
Everywhere and eternally the distance shines bright and blue!
Eternally . . . eternally . . .

Nan Merriman, mezzo-soprano; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eduard van Beinum, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, Dec. 3-6, 1956

Nan Merriman, mezzo-soprano; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded in the Concertgebouw, Mar.-Apr. 1963

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, September 1975

And some Merriman and Baker alternatives":

Nan Merriman, mezzo-soprano; NDR (North German Radio) Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, cond. Live performance, Apr. 4, 1965
Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Live performance from the Herkulessaal of the Residenz, Feb. 27, 1970

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Live performance from the Royal Festival Hall, Oct. 8, 1975

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, Raymond Leppard, cond. Live performance from the Free Trade Hall, Manchester (England), Feb. 22, 1977

PERFORMANCE NOTES: I think Nan Merriman, like Ernst Häfliger, is also heard to better effect with van Beinum than with Jochum, and here time seems clearly a factor. The quick flutter was always part of the voice, take it or leave it, but in 1956 it's more under control, more a feature of the voice than signs of loss of control. But then if we turn to the still-later Schmidt-Isserstedt broadcast performance, the voice seems to hold up okay, for the most part, with the expression of still more passion and even some chance-taking, while deploying a strikingly wider dynamic range -- really nice. (And the tenor soloist, it should be noted, is Fritz Wunderlich. With Schmidt-Isserstedt conducting quite ably, even if the orchestral playing is maybe a little scrambly, there are things to return to in this performance.)

As for the performances by Janet Baker [seen at left rehearsing Britten's Owen Wingrave], after pointing out (yet again) that I'm not the greatest fan, at some point I'd like to listen to the various performances more closely. The one that pops out at me is the earliest, with Rafael Kubelik (and tenor Waldemar Kmentt). I assume the reason DG never let Kubelik record Das Lied (or considered releasing this performance) is the feeling that they already had enough recordings of the piece. But here from the mezzo I get a more solid than usual vocal line and a stronger sense of interpretive direction. The other performances will no doubt please Baker fans, but in varying degrees I'm more aware of the musical lines thinning out where the voice does (for example, when we get to the first "O sieh! Wie eine Silberbarke schwebt der Mond," the voice tends to start unraveling). A hat tip to Rudolf Kempe, then starting his tenure as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony and delivering a performance of considerable flow and gravity -- here's another conductor who generally steered clear of Mahler but I wish hadn't.
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