There is a lot
of the art that conceals art in Haitink’s performance of the
Serenade. For one thing, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it
sounding so completely lovely. All too often in this work
rasping oboes and booming horns prevail over the other wind
instruments while Brahms’s use of only the lower strings creates
muddiness. Here the textures are always light and warm.
And then, it speaks
much of Haitink’s command of the orchestra, together with
his long experience, that the piece actually sounds like a
serenade for once. There’s a gently flowing first movement,
a bucolic scherzo, a gravely paced but not turgid slow movement,
a graceful minuet and a finale whose high spirits never get
out of hand. However, I did begin to lose interest about two-thirds
through the slow movement and never quite regained it.
A suggestion that
the music deals with larger issues came from a comparison
of the version by Sir Adrian Boult. You will see at once from
the timings that there is one big difference, but let me proceed
movement by movement.
| Serenade no.2 |
I |
II |
III |
IV |
V |
| Haitink |
08:12 |
02:44 |
07:14 |
05:14 |
05:38 |
| Boult |
08:59 |
02:24 |
04:43 |
04:09 |
05:22 |
In the first movement
Boult’s nostalgic, romantic account hints at depths and symphonic
dimensions which Haitink seems unwilling to recognize; there
is a breadth and at times a grandeur which can only partly
be accounted for by the slower tempo, since the chronometer
reveals that there isn’t actually all that much difference.
It sounds completely different, though, and in different
moods I could be very grateful for both.
If this is much
as you might expect (this was a very late Boult recording),
the remaining movements tell another tale. Boult takes Brahms’s
“vivace” at its word in the scherzo and gives it a symphonic
drive which Haitink seems to be deliberately avoiding.
From the first
the Boult recording was controversial on account of the very
swift tempo he chose for the “Adagio non troppo”. He gets
away with it with phrasing that still sounds relaxed and I
can’t actually say I got the impression that the expression
is being squeezed out of the music, as usually happens when
a tempo is too fast. On the other hand, can this tempo
be called an adagio? Returning to Haitink, there remains the
problem that the music begins to outstay its welcome somewhere
after the five-minute mark; no such problem with Boult who
has got it over and done with before that anyway. Also, under
Haitink one notices that certain passages don’t seem to have
much activity in them, and there hardly seem enough notes
to fill the texture, which is no doubt what led Boult to take
a much faster tempo.
Might there be
a happy medium? Well, fishing around among other performances
I had on tape, I discovered that Wolfgang Sawallisch (Rome
1975) drew this movement out to 08:52, so perhaps Haitink
is the happy medium. However, I feel that René Leibowitz,
at 06:25 (Rome 1962) probably hit the nail on the head – sufficiently
mobile not to hang fire but with just that little bit more
space than Boult allows. The trouble is, Leibowitz made no
commercial recording of the work (and the unattractive timbre
and modest discipline of the Rome band means there would be
little point in any historical label trying to exhume this
particular one).
In the remaining
movements the differences are minimal, but Boult’s swifter
tempi seem to flow a little more in the minuet and to provide
more in the way of sheer zip in the finale. But you might
prefer Haitink’s more relaxed touch. In view of the striking
differences between these interpretations you could do worse
than to have both of them and I for one will be glad to have
the choice. If forced to plump for one or the other, in the
end it would have to be Boult, since the music seems to have
greater dimensions in his hands.
In the symphony,
Haitink again prevents Brahms’s textures from ever clotting;
the bass-line is never turgid and the brass are always a warm
support rather than craggy in the Klemperer manner. This is
a relaxed, serene performance which almost grudges Brahms
such moments of power or energy as Haitink is compelled to
acknowledge. The opening is more majestic than passionate
and subsides gratefully into the lyrical foothills of the
second subject where it almost becomes becalmed. Though the
actual playing is incisive, the development section and the
coda again avoid any suggestion of drama. The lead back to
the recapitulation is very slow indeed.
The middle movements
take on almost a dream-like quality, very beautiful in their
gentle way though I felt the intermezzo too placid altogether,
especially in the middle section. The strings offer, presumably
under Haitink’s instructions, more portamento than we usually
hear today. Has Haitink been studying the work of his great
Dutch predecessor Willem Mengelberg? The trouble is that,
in this context, the portamenti just add to the rather syrupy
effect. The finale is again majestic, with no concession to
headlong drama, and the serene close leaves you wondering
what the point of the faster music actually was.
And here lies
the problem. It is a very beautiful performance, indeed a
perfect realization of a particular point of view. But it
seems to me to leave too many elements out of the symphony.
It’s not just a question of tempo, but note how Haitink spreads
himself compared with two illustrious predecessors and one
contemporary:
| Symphony no.3 |
I |
II |
III |
IV |
| Haitink |
14:24 |
08:53 |
06:45 |
09:27 |
| Boult |
13:08 |
08:32 |
06:03 |
09:08 |
| Klemperer |
13:04 |
08:17 |
06:12 |
09:14 |
| Colin Davis |
13:27 |
10:00 |
06:38 |
09:33 |
It is salutary
to find Klemperer the swiftest in two of the movements; the
fact that Colin Davis presents a vastly long slow movement
and exceeds Haitink in the finale too, points to the fact
that interpreters in the latter part of the 20th
Century took Brahms interpretation into realms undreamed of
by those musicians like Boult and Klemperer whose roots were
in Brahms’s own world.
But statistics
only tell a part of the tale; neither of the two earlier conductors,
nor Colin Davis either, present such a rigorously one-minded
view of Brahms. The autumnal beauty is there, but so are drama
and passion. With the various elements properly balanced the
final descent into serenity has sense. This time I do not
put Boult at the top of the list since, while his interpretation
is admirable, it doesn’t seem one of his most inspired efforts
(for that you have to go to Symphony no.2, at least as far
as his late cycle is concerned); I am not always a Klemperer
fan but no.3 is the one symphony of the four where he really
does seem to have all the answers, unfolding it in a single
breath and giving full weight to each of its single elements.
Haitink is very beautiful in his way, as I say, but I think
you would have to know the work already very well to appreciate
his view. I should hate to think of any newcomer to Brahms
picking up this record.
The recording
(which I heard as a normal CD) has a very natural bloom and
it is somewhat surprising to learn that these are live performances;
the audience must have been gagged and apparently didn’t even
applaud. Furthermore, there is no suggestion of the tension
and communication of a live performance – for that you must
go to Klemperer.
Christopher
Howell
London Symphony Orchestra/Bernard
Haitink
[69:12] 
