Mahler in Haitink's expert hands
The conductor's in perfect sync with CSO players
Where to start with the magical pairing of Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?
At once a perfect and unlikely match, the modest and no-nonsense Dutchman and the virtuoso and storied orchestra read each other almost telepathically, and the intentions of the conductor, 79, are rewarded with sublime work by the players collectively and individually.
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Haitink himself starts this week's concert with an oddity, Ravel's 1929 orchestration of his own 1895 piano piece, "Menuet antique," a sort of French-Impressionism-meets-Kurt-Weill work. In addition to its inherent beauty, the "Menuet" also demonstrated how Haitink calibrates every section of the orchestra with both clarity and grace.
The death of mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson from breast cancer just under two years ago hit the classical music world like no other blow in recent memory. The chance again to hear "Neruda Songs," a work written for her in 2005 by her husband, Peter Lieberson, was a bittersweet occasion, especially as Lieberson himself is now battling lymphoma.
Kelley O'Connor was Lieberson's own choice as his wife's successor in the work, and she brought a careful intelligence and Iberian flavor to the five settings of the Spanish writer's love poems. The vocal lines are Lieberson's greatest accomplishment, while the orchestrations edge towards kitsch. Haitink knit them all into a moving whole, and the composer was clearly moved when he took the stage.
Haitink's Mahler is the product of decades of consideration and probing study. His CSO recording of the Sixth Symphony is out now, and his shepherding of the Third was one of the proofs that his marriage with Chicago was the right one at the right time.
This week, Haitink does with the First what is often claimed but rarely true about other performances: He takes the score, often at a slow pace that requires extra attention, and makes it float and sing and move anew. Rather than playing it as a race to its final climaxes, Haitink on Thursday night made the brass huzzahs of a piece with all that came before. And if you have ever heard anything as beautiful as the third movement, Mahler's world within a world, I hope that you know how lucky you are.
