Here is my Saturday November 14 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday night November 12, 2009 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with principal conductor Bernard Haitink and CSO principals as soloists.
Haydn, Bruckner magic on view as program develops
Even the Chicago Symphony Orchestra catches its breath occasionally. This fall has been a heavy roll of European touring, Mutimania, and four large-scale works these last two weeks under the painstaking care of principal conductor Bernard Haitink. One had a sense that the CSO concert Thursday night at Symphony Center was more a preview of great performances to come than a fully realized achievement.
When Haitink has paired Haydn and Bruckner in the past, the two composers' visions played and even fed off of each other. This week, the contrasts are greater, and each half of the program stands wholly alone.
Haydn's 1792 B-Flat Major Sinfonia concertante for four instrumental soloists has been a staple of orchestras eager to let their principal players shine. The lineup of concertmaster Robert Chen, cellist John Sharp, oboe Eugene Izotov, and bassoon David McGill could hardly have been more promising: These are gifted players who love chamber-music style. But Sharp was having an unusual off-night, and Chen, so often a master of the courtly style, was too straightforward for Haydn's mischievousness. Izotov and McGill spun magical threads from their double reeds, and Haitink and the orchestra were in true Haydnesque form.
Bruckner began his Ninth Symphony, in D minor in 1891 and it remained unfinished at his death at 72 five years later. Even without a final movement, it has been recognized since the 1930s as a summing up of his work and life.
The CSO's major conductors of recent decades -- Solti, Barenboim, and Boulez -- have all wrestled with this musical and spiritual testament; it's a tribute to conductors and composer that there's no single way to play this 70-minute score. Still, whatever style is at work, there's a motor that has to hum in this piece from the earliest measures if a performance is to cohere fully.
Somehow, despite tremendous playing by this made-for-Bruckner orchestra -- special nod to the glow of the four Wagner tubas played by members of the horn section -- and Haitink's ability to treat the most dramatic climaxes with an uncanny delicacy, that motor did not start whirring until the second-movement Scherzo. But I'll bet it will be purring full time tonight, Haitink's last CSO appearance until his much-awaited, three-week, 11-concert Beethoven Festival in June.
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