CONCERT REVIEW | Mozart & Bruckner | London Symphony Orchestra/Fellner & Haitink | Barbican, London | "Haitink’s kind of wisdom and insight doesn’t come easily"

United Kingdom: London Symphony Orchestra, Till Fellner (Piano) & Bernard Haitink (Conductor). Reviewed at Barbican Hall, London on 10 March 2019.

Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 22

Bruckner, Symphony no. 4 

Bernard Haitink, © Todd Rosenberg

In a concert celebrating the 90^th birthday of Bernard Haitink, the programming of Bruckner – a repertoire hallmark of the Dutch conductor – was always going to arouse a plea towards expectations. But really, that’s only one side of the story because Haitink is a man who has very little to prove. 

Regardless of the narrative, Haitink seems less interested in testing out new pieces than in revisiting repertoire of old kinship such as Bruckner symphonies, prior to his impending sabbatical from September. Looking into Haitink’s remaining schedule, he performs Bruckner’s 4th and 6th symphonies with orchestras he's been closely associated with - the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Also noticeable is a performance of Bruckner’s 4^th symphony with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestra that launched Haitink’s very career. Familiarity is one, but nostalgia is another key word, then.

Familiarity and nostalgia, too, were the two poles the performance of the evening with the London Symphony Orchestra stood upon. Like many of his previous works, there rested an unhurried kind of grandeur, yet with an added poise of benign yet assured nature. Thus even if the brass was marginally protruding in the few tuttis proceeding a leisurely incipience of the first movement – Bruckner asks for four horns, but Haitink’s outline included five – and despite the presence of nine double basses, the sublimity of Haitink was not grounded on dark-hued shock and awe, but one akin to a peaceful Alpine vista that evokes both inevitability and consolation through naturalness of a supreme sort.

Calm pervaded the open pages of the Andante, and Haitink’s sense of balance meant that the woodwinds and strings had equal share in colouring a firm pulse of the movement. Yet sensitivity does not preclude dramatic instincts, and Haitink – once a sought-after opera conductor – conjured a gripping release armoured with Nigel Thomas’ commanding timpani in the second return of the thematic groups. In the desolatory aftermath, it was impossible to question the fact that Bruckner had initially planned the movement as a funeral march.

The Scherzo was neither overtly dramatic nor festive, serving itself as a solid intermezzo between the weights of the Andante and Finale. Bruckner’s marking of the Finale, Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell (moving, but not too quickly) may also describe the mysterious grandeur of Bruckner’s general syntax. Accordingly, both care and suspense were there in the tempo choices, and it was in this movement that Haitink seemed most keen to interpret, giving strings clearly delineated accents. I was especially impressed with the unadorned directness of the lyrical second theme, because this was what seemed to give cohesion to the numerous tuttis spread around the movement. While the third thematic group introduced a new plate of slowness to the underlying pulse, from here emerged a kind of noble sadness. Yet within sadness lies a yearning of an ideal. I wonder if the resolution of this longing was what the coda – taken slowly – was about; one rejoices, but without forgetting what has gone by. Haitink’s kind of wisdom and insight doesn’t come easily, but when it does, one must be thankful one was there.

[The article is published on the Bruckner Journal]

Young-Jin Hur

@yjhur1885