Bernard Haitink may well be 75 this year
but as this concert showed he still has the
ability to unleash a huge sound from an orchestra.
The Concertgebouw has always had the widest
dynamic range of any of the great European
orchestras and that was caught to thrilling
effect in a performance of Shostakovich’s
Eighth Symphony that was remorseless in its
tread and unremittingly dark in its mood.
The very broadness of Haitink’s tempi may
not be to everyone’s taste (including my own
in this work) but there is no doubting the
terror he was able to suggest at key climaxes
(ear-shredding piccolos, for example, had
real agony to their playing; the cries from
the Gulags were for all to hear).
The symphony opened wonderfully with double
basses and ‘cellos conjuring up a bleak landscape,
albeit sheathed beneath some magisterially
toned playing (how magnificently he got the
strings to blend in unison). It was certainly
an epic opening – arresting even – but as
so often with Haitink in this "symphony
of suffering" it seemed commanding rather
than genuinely tragic or forbidding. The dynamic
reach of this orchestra was scintillating
in the ethereal melody that followed, and
catastrophic in the first climax which shouldered
playing on a terrifying scale. There was almost
something Brucknerian about the way that Haitink
built up these climaxes, yet almost nothing
Brucknerian about the sheer clarity of sound
produced by the orchestra; what might have
been dense orchestration gave way to a cruel
separation of textures.
If Haitink’s view of this work is not especially
rugged (as the best performances often are),
it is most certainly laced with a sense of
the apocalyptic. An overtly brutal Allegretto,
with blisteringly precise playing, contrasted
with a manic Allegro where the strings
were plundered of their usual warmth to give
them a rabid, splenetic pulse. A lone trumpet
pierced the flesh like a spear. It heralded
the visceral collapse into the Largo
which the orchestra projected with playing
that was both torturous and tragic. The final
movement hovered between fragmentation and
equivocation, its closing pages bordering
on the spiritual, breathtaking dynamics adding
to an illusion of peacefulness that was by
no means an inevitable conclusion of Haitink’s
earlier working of the symphony’s more bitter
moments. This was a Mahlerian close to Shostakovich’s
most Mahlerian symphony.
And, as in the Debussy which preceded it,
the playing of the Concertgebouw was magnificent.
Reedy woodwind, sonorous strings and beautifully
toned brass added a Western palate to Shostokovich’s
uncertain, but dark, symphonic shadows; in
La mer, there was something languorous
about the playing that made this picture of
the sea shimmer rather beautifully. But there
was also something wild about Haitink’s view
of the work – crescendos didn’t so much roll
as swell (emphatically louder than Debussy
marks it in the score) – and one could argue
that whilst the strings often rippled the
woodwind surged forward, precariously upsetting
the balance. This worked better in the final
movement where the low strings rumbled – rather
too distantly – and the woodwind threw up
ominous gusts of sound. But with such capricious
playing, this was a performance which affected
a wind-swept atmosphere memorably.
Haitink continues his 75th birthday
celebrations at the Barbican with the Vienna
Philharmonic in April (Mahler’s Ninth) and
the London Symphony Orchestra in June (Mahler’s
Sixth). In September, he is joined by the
Berlin Philharmonic in Mahler’s Third and
in November with the Dresden Staatskapelle
in Weber, Hindemith and Beethoven.
Marc Bridle
Return to:
Music on the Web