My Saturday May 28 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday May 26, 2011 Chicago Symphony Orchestra program with former principal conductor Bernard Haitink in music of Schumann, Mozart, and Brahms with guest pianist Emanuel Ax.
Haitink's vigorous and insightful spring return to CSO
Ax is like-minded partner in Mozart
BY ANDREW PATNER
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday May 31 at 7:30 p.m.
In rehearsals and even in master classes the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s esteemed former principal conductor Bernard Haitink says very little. “When exactly are you going to talk during the concert?” he asks aspiring music makers. Even after 60 years as a professional musician, the Dutch veteran will answer many questions about particular pieces or composers with, “I’m having trouble putting this into words.”
“Communicate musically,” is Haitink’s challenge. “Listen,” is his mantra.
And so it was Thursday night at Orchestra Hall when the man who lent a helpful and uplifting hand to the CSO for the four years between the Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Muti eras began his two-week, eight-concert residency with a program of Schumann, Mozart, and Brahms. Beginning with Schumann’s 1849 Overture to Manfred, Op. 115, a work too-often played for show (when it is played at all) rather than with care, Haitink seemed to be saying to the players and audience, “Take it down a notch. Listen.”
In Emanuel Ax, Haitink has a like-minded partner in this approach. The Soviet-born American pianist, who turns 62 next month, is known both for his on- and off-stage joviality and his fluidity at the keyboard. There was plenty of light in Mozart’s 1784 G Major Concerto No. 17, K. 453, but also a clear sense of the chromatic and harmonic complexity of the seductive slow movement. After the intricate finale, Ax asked for -- and Haitink gladly motioned -- a bow by wind soloists Eugene Izotov, Louise Dixon, Daniel Gingrich, and David McGill who had been the pianist’s sensitive and playful partners.
Haitink worked through serious back pain and treatment during some of his essential leadership time in Chicago. It was a true pleasure to see him take and hold the stage as the vigorous figure of years past. He led the Brahms 1885 E minor Fourth Symphony, Op. 98, with that perfect Haitink balance of careful listening, rigorous direction and rhythmic sense, and belief that by making a work’s structure clear its emotional messages will follow. It’s a classroom nugget that the final movement of the composer’s last symphony is a passacaglia, built on a repeating bass figure. Haitink lets you hear this structure and the music, too. He finds beauty where many others offer only action, power, or athleticism. We and the CSO players are so lucky to have him in our musical lives.
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