Prom 57: COE/Haitink (28.08.15)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30
Royal Albert Hall

Live from the BBC Proms: The Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Bernard Haitink with soloist Maria João Pires in a programme of Mozart and Schubert.

Schubert: Overture in C major 'In the Italian Style', D 591
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K488
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C major 'Great', D 944

Maria João Pires (piano)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

Refined but also profoundly expressive, Maria João Pires is one of the great Mozart interpreters of her generation. She returns to the Proms to continue our series of late Mozart piano concertos: Number 23, in A major, boasts quasi-operatic melodies and deft woodwind colouring. It took musicians and audiences a long time to come to terms with Schubert's 'unplayable' Ninth Symphony, but now - like that other great unplayable, Beethoven's Ninth - it has won an unquestioned place in the repertoire.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

So good to have Haitink back at the Proms.

[cloughie]

So good to have Haitink back at the Proms.

...and Pires.

[Alison]

Yes, really excited about this one. There is no work right now I'd rather hear Haitink conducting than Schubert 9.

Of those in his repertoire anyway :)

[richardfinegold]

Yes, really excited about this one. There is no work right now I'd rather hear Haitink conducting than Schubert 9.

Of those in his repertoire anyway :)

There is a really good Amsterdam Schubert 9 (or is it 8 now?) in the box set Haitink: The Phillips Years

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There is a really good Amsterdam Schubert 9 (or is it 8 now?) . . .

It's 8 in Germany, but 7 on my old miniature score.

[BBMmk2]

Despite the somewhat, hmmm plethora of Mozart piano concerti, this one I won'
t mind, as the artists concerned, will most certainly bring a new dimension to this work and the other ones on the programme too. I will always remember the Brahms cycle they gave a few years ago. Haitink keeps on coming back! :)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Since when has it been possible to describe four piano concertos and a double piano concerto as a "plethora", Bbm? What about the plethora of Prokofiev PCs? To say nothing of the inundation of Beethoven's? (Five PCs AND a Triple Concerto!)

[greenilex]

Not sure "plethora" lends itself to this usage, does it? Isn't it a plural?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not sure "plethora" lends itself to this usage, does it? Isn't it a plural?

I've always understood it to mean "an excess" - a "too much-(or "too many"-)ness", if you like. For the lupinophobe Bbm, even a single Mozart Piano Concerto counts as "plethoric"!

[Darkbloom]

Yes, really excited about this one. There is no work right now I'd rather hear Haitink conducting than Schubert 9.

Of those in his repertoire anyway :)

Me too! I hope I don't have unduly high expectations. I have never heard him do it before, but you'd think it was a work that would suit him. I was a bit disappointed by his Schubert 5th last year, it never quite seemed to lift off the ground, for all its beauty (although that is so often the case when I hear that work live), but you would think he would have an instinctive understanding of how to keep the 9th moving without getting bogged down. Is there another symphony which sorts out conductors as much as this? If you can make this one work in performance I can't help feeling that you can do almost anything.

[BBMmk2]

O)ne of the few proms this season, for me too!

[Petrushka]

I'll be in the hall for this one and am greatly looking forward to it after a relatively lack-lustre season (so far).

I've not heard Haitink conduct the Schubert 9 live either but do have fond memories of a 1975 Prom performance he gave with the BBC SO. He conducted it again with the BBC SO at a Barbican (?) concert in 1987 the same day of the announcement of his appointment to the Royal Opera. The fact that I recall both of these speaks for itself.

[Darkbloom]

I'll be in the hall for this one and am greatly looking forward to it after a relatively lack-lustre season (so far).

I've not heard Haitink conduct the Schubert 9 live either but do have fond memories of a 1975 Prom performance he gave with the BBC SO. He conducted it again with the BBC SO at a Barbican (?) concert in 1987 the same day of the announcement of his appointment to the Royal Opera. The fact that I recall both of these speaks for itself.

For all the great orchestras Haitink has worked with, I think he got some of the most amazing results with the ROH orchestra. Anyone who heard him conduct the revival of Tristan got something mind-blowing in terms of the colours he was getting in the pit. I've always been in two minds about him in opera because you never felt that he was all that interested in what was going on on stage, but the sounds he was getting were often astoundingly good. You never quite know what you are going to get with the old boy though; sometimes he seems a bit fed up and it sounds a bit detached, but on the days when he is switched on you are going to remember it for a long time.

One of the incidental pleasures of seeing him live is the rapturous reception he gets from the audience and the embarrassed look on his face at the same time. I suppose he must have a big ego, like any other conductor, but he seems to be about as reluctant a figure as you can imagine on stage.

[Alison]

You're a lucky lad Pet. Work prevents me from attending but I am determined to stay commitment free to be able to listen live on the night.

Based on a Schubert 9 with the LSO in 2012 I expect tempi to be relatively swift with little speeding up for the first subject and little slowing down for the second.

Very unlikely to get bogged down I would have thought.

Interesting comments from Bloomy, I do recognise that detached quality he mentions: last years Schubert 5 had something of that feel.