Haitink's Mahler 2 -- A conductor's late triumph with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

 

Here is my Saturday, November 22 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday November 20, 2008 Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus concert with CSO principal conductor Bernard Haitink,  soprano Miah Persson, and mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn.

 

A rapturous Mahler symphony, courtesy of Haitink

BY ANDREW PATNER

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Repeats at  8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday Nov. 25

There is much discussion these days about "late style" in the work of composers, writers, painters, and other artists.  To this fascinating phenomenon of continued and late flowerings by Beethoven, Verdi, Shakespeare, and Rembrandt should be added the work that comes late in the life or careers of great symphony orchestra conductors.

From Sir Georg Solti's reconsideration of Beethoven's tempos and Shostakovich's politics to Pierre Boulez's blossoming as an interpreter of classical works he had long ignored to Daniel Barenboim's unanticipated taking up of Mahler, Chicago has seen many examples of late style at the podium.

But the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's current principal conductor, Bernard Haitink, just a few months shy of his 80th birthday, seems to be outdoing them all.  With each new addition to his CSO repertoire of major works by Bruckner, Mahler, and Shostakovich (and, with the Boston Symphony, J.S. Bach), it is as if we are participating in real time in the conductor's own deeply personal and scholarly reexamination of these weighty scores.

I have attended at least a dozen different presentations of Mahler's C minor Second Symphony, the so-called Resurrection, since the 1970s, and it has long been one of my favorite works in any genre.  But I have never heard the piece as it sounded under Haitink on Thursday night.  It was as if the players and listeners were experiencing the musical discoveries that Mahler made in this revolutionary work (composed and revised from 1888-94, and premiered in full in 1895 in Berlin) just as they were being made by the composer.

In an 80-minute-plus work whose many fans often have to fight the urge to sing along with the choral and vocal solo parts, and at least to hum along with both the massive and intimate orchestral writing, concentration in the packed hall was total.  While being ever loyal -- but with the loyalty of a champion, not an acolyte -- to the score, Haitink made each choice of tempo, rhythm, volume, massing, and color seem almost shocking.

When before have the offstage brass in the huge fifth and last movement sounded both so striking and so altogether right? When did the eerie passing of solo lines come off so quietly and in such silence that you could actually hear the lips of the principal trumpet, horn, and flute leave their instruments? When was the second movement Ländler dance played so delicately that it was as if we could see couples greeting each other with a "How do you do?"

Many in attendance still had the voice and presence of the great American mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (left) in mind from the CSO's most recent performances of this symphony in March 2006. Not only was her singing of the fourth movement "Urlicht" ("Heavenly Light") in full keeping with its name, but just months after these, her final concerts anywhere, she was dead from cancer at 52. 

But in the fine young Dutch mezzo Christianne Stotijn (left), like Hunt Lieberson herself a former string player, Haitink somehow has found a singer who shares his vision totally, and so we wound up listening to and thinking of Mahler, and not any particular artist, however gifted.

Duain Wolfe's chorus, all instrumental sections and soloists, there's nowhere here to start or stop.  We're experiencing historic musicmaking in Chicago these days.  Miss it at your peril.  And don't be late.