WEEKEND COLUMNISTS No wonder Bernard Haitink’s back has gone. Last year at the Proms I heard the then 79-year-old maestro conducting Shostakovich’s desolate Fourth Symphony, and the unwavering concentration with which he brought the work to its eerie, hushed, slow ending was mesmerising to behold. Every member of the vast orchestra seemed utterly attentive to every gesture (and with Haitink there is the absolute minimum of gesture); the packed Albert Hall was equally rapt. I thought he hardly looked older than when I had first heard him conduct Bruckner’s Fifth at the Proms in 1974, an event that planted a seed for me that has never stopped growing. Atlas-like, he was still holding the world, or a big musical world, on his shoulders.
A couple of weeks ago at the Royal Festival Hall Haitink was looking his 80 years – tired and walking slowly and with obvious discomfort. A tall stool was placed on the podium, but in case you were thinking he might conduct from a sitting position (like, say, the aged Otto Klemperer), banish that thought. The stool was used merely for the conductor to rest his back between movements (four of Haydn’s Clock Symphony and four of Bruckner’s Seventh). This most upright of conductors shrugged off all sign of physical frailty, taking up his characteristic posture leaning forward, hearkening to and urging on the somewhat po-faced players of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, moving the music ever forward at its own pace.
What does a conductor do? There are those, including many orchestral musicians, who are understandably sceptical about the highly paid show-ponies of the podium. I recall being at a party with some members of the Philharmonia Orchestra and the general feeling that the less attention the orchestra paid to its then big-name conductor (the late Giuseppe Sinopoli) the better the result. Some conductors, notoriously, develop the cult of the personality, the silver-haired heroics of Herbert von Karajan or the heart-on-sleeve angst (occasionally schmaltz) of Leonard Bernstein. But all that stuff is more for the record companies and promoters and does not get to the heart of the matter, certainly not to the heart of either Karajan or Bernstein, great conductors both.
Haitink has never developed a cult of the personality. Some might say that he doesn’t have much personality, at least in the dramatic, theatrical sense. His stolid Dutch face rarely betrays any strong emotion. When asked to speak about music, he is famously halting. During a recent newspaper interview all he could bring out, according to his interlocutor, was “a pained expression and a few cryptic phrases”. So what does he do? Is he just another redundant name; would the Chicago Symphony Orchestra play just as well without him?
As I listened at the Royal Festival Hall I began to realise why Haitink does not like to speak about the music. His aim, quite simply, is to let the music be heard, not to impose his view upon it.
But letting the music be heard doesn’t imply any lack of attention or, indeed, tension.
Haitink seems to have a gift of breathing air into orchestral textures. Everything sounds clear, each layer of sound differentiated, rather than coalescing into a muddy mass. I loved the way the superb strings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra delineated the contrapuntal textures in the mini-double fugue of the finale of Haydn’s Clock Symphony. This was simply a conductor and orchestra taking the trouble to bring out a brilliant passage of invention which might pass in a mechanical whirr; to allow it to be savoured.
The famous tick-tocking accompaniment of the Clock’s slow movement was done with the utmost refinement and a kind of deadpan Dutch humour; quite delicious. All of this was just music-making of the highest quality and integrity, drawing attention not to Haitink but to Haydn. As a result, perhaps, in a sensation-seeking world, it receives less than its due.
Another of Haitink’s gifts is pacing. His speeds nearly always sound just right, never exaggerated, not too fast and not to slow. The presto first movement of the Clock was given just a fraction more breathing space than usual, and the tick-tocking andante was fairly brisk. Boringly moderate? Not in the least, just the best way to bring out the detail and the flavour.
But I suppose we had really come to hear Bruckner. Haitink excels at holding together these immense spans of sound.
Would his back be up to it? From the moment the massed cellos sang out their long, arching opening melody, I did not doubt the heavenly vaults would hold.
Here is what a great conductor does: he holds the great structure in place, so that all the details find their meaning within it. A friend said afterwards that he felt puzzled in relation to Bruckner’s psychology. Haitink’s Bruckner is more about cosmology than psychology. The symphony leads us through vast expanses of darkness to a final apotheosis of light.
As Haitink conducts it, not a blinding flash but a clear blaze of glory in which you can see every ember glow.
harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres
