In my time as
a classical music listener, a fifteen-year journey that I’m
sure is short compared to some of my fellow reviewers, I’ve
haven’t quite decided what to make of Bernard Haitink. At
the time the Mahler bug bit me, he was recording a cycle
in Berlin. I quite liked what I had the opportunity to hear
on the radio, but the project was cancelled and the issues
were out of print before I had the chance to pick up any
of them. It now looks like some have reappeared on CD: 4
and 5 on Philips 475445; on DVD: 1 and 2 on Philips 000654009;
and 1, 2, 3, and 7 on ArkivMusic’s print-on demand system.
More generally, I’ve found Haitink sometimes renders very
compelling and sonically gorgeous accounts of various works
in a straight-ahead style that lets the composer’s voice
shine through. At other times he renders something so prettified
and inoffensive that it seems one has stumbled across an
album of Muzak. I had this Jeckyll and Hyde experience just
this week — discovering that some of his Tchaikovsky symphony
recordings are surprisingly good, while his recent Brahms
cycle with the London Symphony (LSO0070) is unconscionably
bad. So what was I to expect from the SACD reissue of his
1970s Concertgebouw Mahler Fifth?
Something that
Haitink gets right is the
Adagietto. Often reviewers
treat this as a question of tempo, or total time for the
movement. While this can be a helpful indicator, the question
really is: is this movement integrated into the architecture
of the piece, or is it being lovingly caressed or put on
display because of its beauty and fame? Haitink does an excellent
job of the integration here. Another plus, a result of both
good conducting and good engineering, is that every little
detail, every line of musical argument, can be heard clearly.
This effort of transformation, putting nearly forty-year
old quadraphonic sound into SACD format, doesn’t quite create
a twenty-first century recording, but still, it’s very good
1970s sound. The Eighth is the only other symphony in Haitink’s
cycle that was recorded quadraphonically and is being released
in SACD by PentaTone.
A place where
Haitink gets things wrong is with his brass timbres. When
working with the top Middle European orchestras, there’s
the temptation to make the beautiful sounds these orchestras
are so notably capable of. This can go wrong — it’s not the
appropriate sound. In Mahler’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies
the brass needs to snarl and occasionally bray. In Haitink’s
hands they have much more of a tendency to purr.
In the end, this
release will be of interest to two groups: ardent Haitink
fans who want a copy of this recording in the best sound
possible, and for audiophiles for whom the draw of experiencing
a quadraphonic transfer is irresistible. For the rest of
us, it is not necessary. There are several excellent performances
of the Fifth in contemporary, though not SACD, sound: Bernstein’s
DG recording, Chailly, and Gielen. Zinman’s SACD series to
date augured well for what he might accomplish with the
Fifth, and Dan Morgan's very recent
review bears
this out, so audiophiles are spoilt for choice.
Brian Burtt
Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra/Bernard Haitink 
[70:55] 
