Here is my Saturday April 18 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday April 16, 2009, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with principal conductor Bernard Haitink.
Haitink, CSO offer new revelations on Bruckner
Bernard Haitink has turned his transitional role as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor into a historic period of collaboration and growth. Aided by the resumption of recording activity by the CSO, in a short period he is building a legacy with legs as well.
In the past few years, he has turned expectations that he would be a thoughtful caretaker of both the orchestra's quality and the scores in front of him into realizations that he is instead in a late career partnership filled with deep insight into many of the great works of the repertoire.
Haitink, now 80, has long performed the works of Anton Bruckner. But his investigations of these giant symphonies with their repeated blocks of sound have paralleled rather than intersected the cycles through these works that Chicagoans have heard from Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim. Rather than finding celebrations of sound or capital-"R" Romantic statements in these pieces, Haitink follows the pathbreaking efforts of Eugen Jochum, his predecessor as music director of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra, and sees the Bruckner symphonies on Bruckner's own terms -- as efforts to communicate desires and thoughts that cannot be expressed by words alone.
We are guided through a story with many digressions and unexpected recoveries. As Austrian as Bruckner was, Haitink seems to marry him with that ultimate French narrator, Marcel Proust, to produce performances that must be viewed from different angles in space and time even to begin to comprehend them.
This understanding makes Haitink an ideal guide to Bruckner's most challenging work, the C minor Eighth Symphony of 1884-92. Thursday night with the CSO, Haitink offered revelations on the level of Pierre Boulez's encounter with this work beginning 12 years ago. But where Boulez makes us take on the structure of this 80-minute work, Haitink keeps us focused on the line of the argument, however many times Bruckner makes us think the line has been interrupted.
Just two years ago, Haitink shifted to Leopold Nowak's 1955 edition of the 1890 version of this piece, and its paring down to Bruckner's intentions suits him. Each movement is laid out clearly, from the big noises of the Allegro, to the jaggedness of the Scherzo (complete with harps in the trio!), to the inner depths and prayerful heights of the Adagio. Just when we think the conductor is being too indulgent of Bruckner's longueurs in the Finale, he shows us how all the themes fit together and allows us to listen back in our minds to the unfolding we have just experienced.
Every member, section, and section leader within the orchestra rose to this occasion. Conducting from a chair due to a pinched nerve, Haitink was even given the rare honor at a first performance of the players insisting that he take a solo bow without their standing. Right they were.
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