Bernard Haitink at 85 - and Beyond.

[Darkbloom]

Wand fans have probably come across this interview before, but I'll post the link in case some haven't. I think the story about the rehearsals gets mentioned.

http://www.bruceduffie.com/wand.html

[HighlandDougie]

I remember the Bruckner 8th at the 2000 Edinburgh Festival well, both as a memorable performance and as a hot and sticky evening in the Usher Hall. Wand, as was his wont, demanded that the air conditioning be switched off so, on a very warm night (they do occasionally happen in Scotland) with a completely full hall, he got his way. I can’t remember the reason for his request but he was, as the John Drummond story attests, a very difficult man by all accounts. I think that I remember hearing from someone that his poor wife bore the brunt of his tantrums. Now Bernie, when he appeared at the Festival at around the same time (Mahler’s 3rd with the BBC Symphony) made no such requests.

[bluestateprommer]

Yes, you might very well be right about this, I have a ticket for his LSO concert on March 21 and, unless there is a Prom in the summer, I'm more or less reconciled to the fact that this could well be the last concert I see him give.

There is a Haitink biography, written by Simon Mundy and published in 1984 so the story stops just at the point where Haitink took up his post at Covent Garden. A lot has happened since and one hopes that Mundy might revisit his volume and expand it.

For anyone up to travel later this year, a few upcoming BH appearances on the continent in coming months:

(a) June 15, 2019; Radio Filharmonisch Orkest at the Concertgebouw: https://www.concertgebouw.nl/concert...9bf9eee5ccdba2

(b) Lucerne Festival:
1. August 20, 2019, COE @ the KKL: https://www.lucernefestival.ch/en/pr...a-richter/1092
2. September 6, 2019, Vienna Phil @ the KKL: https://www.lucernefestival.ch/en/pr...y-perahia/1105

(c) Salzburg Festival, Vienna Phil (same program as will be in Lucerne), August 30 & 31, 2019: https://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/...rmonic-haitink

Part of me wonders if Haitink might do some more work with conducting master classes, if he does indeed stay full time in Lucerne and stop with the jet-setting. This past NYT blog post from 2011 gives a flavor of it:

https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/lucerne-easter-festival-haitink-holds-up-a-mirror-for-promising-maestros/

[zola]

For anyone up to travel later this year, a few upcoming BH appearances on the continent in coming months:

(a) June 15, 2019; Radio Filharmonisch Orkest at the Concertgebouw: https://www.concertgebouw.nl/concert...9bf9eee5ccdba2

(b) Lucerne Festival:
1. August 20, 2019, COE @ the KKL: https://www.lucernefestival.ch/en/pr...a-richter/1092
2. September 6, 2019, Vienna Phil @ the KKL: https://www.lucernefestival.ch/en/pr...y-perahia/1105

(c) Salzburg Festival, Vienna Phil (same program as will be in Lucerne), August 30 & 31, 2019: https://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/...rmonic-haitink

Part of me wonders if Haitink might do some more work with conducting master classes, if he does indeed stay full time in Lucerne and stop with the jet-setting. This past NYT blog post from 2011 gives a flavor of it:

https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2...sing-maestros/

A bit earlier than any of those, there seems to be a Haitink concert streamed live next week. Beethoven's 9th.

https://www.br-klassik.de/concert/ausstrahlung-1654392.html

[frankbridge]

Not quite Conchis: as Gunter Wand fanatics my friend and I left the Proms and travelled by train to Edinburgh in 2001 in the faint hope of seeing him in concert for the last time. There was no certainty that he would turn up at all, as he was very frail, but bless my soul he manage to do it, hauled up to his chair by aides: just one work, Bruckner's Seventh Symphony with the North Germany SO in the Usher Hall. Quite an experience And then he passed away. RIP Gunter

Did he ever patch it up with the Concertgebouw Orchestra?

Personally, I'm glad Gunter Wand died in the saddle. I saw his final Proms concert in 2001, knowing it would be the last time he ever conducted in Britain, if not anywhere. He was dead less than six months later.

[bluestateprommer]

A bit earlier than any of those, there seems to be a Haitink concert streamed live next week. Beethoven's 9th.

https://www.br-klassik.de/concert/au...g-1654392.html

Don't forget the interview link down the page, if anyone wants to brush up their German:

https://www.br-klassik.de/themen/klassik-entdecken/bernard-haitink-dirigent-90-jahre-br-symphonieorchester-konzerte-100.html

Of course, this thread should now be "Bernard Haitink at 90", since today is the big day, and all best wishes to him.

[Keraulophone]

I spoke to a young violinist in the Orchestra who told me that Wand rehearsed and rehearsed them in repertoire they knew inside out... I'll need 12 rehearsals', replied Dr. Wand!

This is the feeling one gets when listening to some of those 1970s Karajan rehearsal extracts in which he drills the Berlin Phil to the edge of insanity in, for example, a Beethoven symphony that they must have played together many times before, but clearly not to the maestro’s satisfaction.

My experience of over-rehearsal is that it is usually counterproductive. When time constraints necessitate very limited rehearsal, the performance often goes very well, assuming they are a highly competent group of musicians, because everyone is attentively listening to one other and enjoying the freshness of the experience of recreating the score in sound, as well as having to watch the conductor more than usual. Those conductors who try to brow-beat an orchestra or choir into replicating a performance precisely as it had been in rehearsal are IMO deluded and are trying to do something that is innately unmusical. The great Yevgeny Mravinsky, ruler of the Leningrad Phil for forty years, once cancelled that evening’s concert because the rehearsal had contained such an unrepeatably perfect rendition of a symphony (by Bruckner?) that the concert would have been an inevitable failure. After how many rehearsals, I wonder?!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is the feeling one gets when listening to some of those 1970s Karajan rehearsal extracts in which he drills the Berlin Phil to the edge of insanity in, for example, a Beethoven symphony that they must have played together many times before, but clearly not to the maestro’s satisfaction.

Like the one where he gets the Violas to play all four divided parts in the finale of the Ninth Symphony, rather than just the two outer parts as they'd been playing together many times before Karajan got them to notice what Beethoven had written?

There is a particular danger with works that orchestras become very familiar with, that players can play what they think they ought to play - what they "remember" from their previous performances - rather than looking with fresh eyes at what is actually written. A conductor bringing their attention back to the score is certainly not "over-rehearsal", or "counterproductive".

[Barbirollians]

Like the one where he gets the Violas to play all four divided parts in the finale of the Ninth Symphony, rather than just the two outer parts as they'd been playing together many times before Karajan got them to notice what Beethoven had written?

There is a particular danger with works that orchestras become very familiar with, that players can play what they think they ought to play - what they "remember" from their previous performances - rather than looking with fresh eyes at what is actually written. A conductor bringing their attention back to the score is certainly not "over-rehearsal", or "counterproductive".

Hadn't he been in charge since about 1960 - had he only just noticed himself ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hadn't he been in charge since about 1960 - had he only just noticed himself ?

Longer than that, straight after Furtwangler died in1954 - I think that that particular rehearsal sequence was a preparation for the 1960s recording of the Ninth (and with Herbie, there's always the possibility that these were "staged" for the cameras, so that the most interesting points of several earlier rehearsals were reproduced for the cameras).

But it's Bernie's birthday, not Herbie's, so perhaps for another time ... ?

[cloughie]

Longer than that, straight after Furtwangler died in1954 - I think that that particular rehearsal sequence was a preparation for the 1960s recording of the Ninth (and with Herbie, there's always the possibility that these were "staged" for the cameras, so that the most interesting points of several earlier rehearsals were reproduced for the cameras).

But it's Bernie's birthday, not Herbie's, so perhaps for another time ... ?

...the move to the BPO caused Karajan to ditch his commitments to the Philharmonia - his preferred successor was Cantelli, who died in a plane crash in 1956. Walter Legge whose orchestra was the Philharmonia then took on Klemperer as its first Permanent conductor in 1959.

[bluestateprommer]

Trying to get the thread back to its nominal purpose (ahem), some links from Radio 4 Netherlands related to Uncle Bernie:

https://www.nporadio4.nl/actueel/artikelen/595-in-de-spotlight-bernard-haitink

https://www.nporadio4.nl/podium/nieuws/2277-gouden-opnamen-van-bernard-haitink

Bonus from Bavarian Radio: https://www.br-klassik.de/themen/kla...zerte-102.html

[Alison]

Looking forward to Pet’s Haitink birthday concert.

I’m going with

Beethoven: Piano Concerto 4
Alfred Brendel

Shostakovich: Symphony 15

London Philharmonic Orchestra

[Petrushka]

Looking forward to Pet’s Haitink birthday concert.

I’m going with

Beethoven: Piano Concerto 4
Alfred Brendel

Shostakovich: Symphony 15

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Over on the WAYLTN thread! Mahler's Resurrection with the Concertgebouw in the latest remastering in the new Mahler Symphonies box.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Beethoven: Piano Concerto 4
Alfred Brendel
Shostakovich: Symphony 15
London Philharmonic Orchestra

Excellent choice - two of Haitink's best recordings there.