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A<\/span>fter six-and-a-half decades on the podium, Bernard Haitink<\/a> was incredibly lucky to conduct himself into retirement in September 2019, rather than simply vanish in the orchestral silence of 2020. <\/span>And how lucky I was to witness at close quarters his final, transformative Bruckner performances in London and Lucerne, the latter of which was caught on film for my BBC documentary.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Bruckner\u2019s Seventh Symphony was the work he chose both for his first British appearance in Liverpool in 1961 and at his BBC Proms debut five years later. By wonderful symmetry, the same towering piece marked his Royal Albert Hall<\/a><\/strong> farewell in 2019 \u2013 at the age of 90, giving his 90th Prom. The audience was focused, rapt and deeply moved, as he waved his baton and walked off down the bull-run for the final time.<\/span><\/p>\n If Bruckner is seen by many as a divisive composer, Haitink has always known which side of the fence he sits on. He was bowled over by the Eighth Symphony on the radio when he was nine \u2013 but then, as he told me, the young Bernard was \u2018not normal\u2019. The shy boy let slip his enthusiasm for the composer at school, and was accordingly mocked. He was later declined conducting lessons, told by a teacher that he had \u2018no talent\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n It was under Nazi occupation during the war that Haitink first encountered a symphony orchestra. In 1947, he travelled to the Salzburg Festival to hear Furtw\u00e4ngler conduct Bruckner\u2019s Eighth (\u2018fantastic\u2019) and a young Karajan in Beethoven\u2019s Ninth (\u2018empty\u2019). He remains ambivalent about Karajan, whom he describes as an \u2018orchestra tamer\u2019. The music\u2011making he admired \u2013 if not always the methods \u2013 came from Otto Klemperer, Erich and Carlos Kleiber, Bruno Walter and Adrian Boult.<\/span><\/p>\n Eventually he managed to join the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic (\u2018in the back desk of the third violins\u2019, he says with typical self-deprecation) for a year, which perhaps explains the heartfelt commitment to orchestral musicians that has defined his career. The orchestra then bravely took him on as its conductor (\u2018we wanted a Dutchman\u2019, says its erstwhile percussionist Rob Meyn), which soon led to his long relationship with the famous Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, where he was chief conductor for 27 years. But that relationship was often prickly, and it was significant that for his final Dutch performance last year, he chose to return to the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic instead \u2013 a thank you for the gamble it had taken on him 65 years earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n We filmed their first rehearsal in Hilversum, where we tried to solve the Haitink conundrum: how does such a modest, undemonstrative man \u2013 the antithesis of the \u2018normal\u2019 maestro \u2013 galvanise his players to create such a distinctive sound? <\/span>\u2018The orchestra just sounds different under him,\u2019 says Vienna Philharmonic double bassist Michael Bladerer. \u2018When he takes up the baton,\u2019 adds Haitink\u2019s wife Patricia, \u2018it\u2019s as though the electricity is switched on. When it\u2019s over, he\u2019s confronted with himself again.\u2019 <\/span>He speaks very little in rehearsal but will sometimes rein in the brass. According to concertmaster Elisabeth Perry, he often asks the orchestra to play quieter than any other conductor does.<\/span><\/p>\n Haitink has always known he can \u2018translate music\u2019 with his hands. <\/span>\u2018I\u2019m quite proud of it,\u2019 he tells me. The fizzing flick of his wrist gives a glimpse of the fire still in his belly. In both London and Lucerne, he conducted the 65-minute Bruckner 7 from memory, standing most of the time and constantly tuned into every nuance. The crescendos were carefully paced to avoid preempting the climaxes, while the delicacy of the composer\u2019s scoring in the slow movement was hauntingly realised, never losing momentum. To give his interpretations scale and shape, \u2018he stands at the edge of the landscape and can see all the way to the end of the horizon,\u2019 says pianist Emanuel Ax. Haitink himself compares it to climbing a mountain, but he has no time for those lingering over the view: \u2018Come on!\u2019 he says, \u2018there are still more beautiful places to explore!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n In his tenth decade of life, Haitink had an almost Zen-like calm, but the younger man could be awkward or brittle, which perhaps made him an ideal exponent of the edgy music of Mahler. His relations with management were sometimes tense \u2013 more than once he threatened to resign over planned cutbacks, thereby saving his musicians\u2019 jobs. When he later came to opera, he found himself at odds with the wackier ideas of stage directors. Richard Jones\u2019s offbeat production of Wagner\u2019s Ring Cycle<\/i><\/a><\/strong> at Covent Garden caused him particular grief, but in the end, he always surrendered to the music.<\/span><\/p>\n In recent years he has passed on the torch to aspiring conductors in masterclasses. His advice to them was gentle but stern: \u2018Don\u2019t think about how you look. Study your scores. Then, if the Holy Spirit comes, you\u2019ll have a good day.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s advice that he continued to take himself. Just as he used to do after difficult performances, he would read \u2013 and make notes on \u2013 the score of a Beethoven string quartet. \u2018My heart opens again,\u2019 he said. \u2018This is my home. I love it, and don\u2019t want to give it up. <\/span>Music is my life.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n \u2018<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\n By BBC Music Magazine Published: Friday, 22 October 2021 at 12:00 am After six-and-a-half decades on the podium, Bernard Haitink was incredibly lucky to conduct himself into retirement in September 2019, rather than simply vanish in the orchestral silence of 2020. And how lucky I was to witness at close quarters his final, transformative Bruckner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":6885,"template":"","categories":[],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"5"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro.jpg",1200,900,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro-768x576.jpg",768,576,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro-1024x768.jpg",800,600,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro.jpg",1200,900,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/10\/remembering-bernard-haitink-behind-the-scenes-of-the-documentary-bernard-haitink-the-enigmatic-maestro.jpg",1200,900,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By BBC Music Magazine Published: Friday, 22 October 2021 at 12:00 am After six-and-a-half decades on the podium, Bernard Haitink was incredibly lucky to conduct himself into retirement in September 2019, rather than simply vanish in the orchestral silence of 2020. And how lucky I was to witness at close quarters his final, transformative Bruckner…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/6884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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