Word: haitink
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...Boston Symphony Orchestra, sporting a full program of internationally renowned conductors and soloists, rounded out another fine summer at the Tangle-wood Music Center. Perhaps the most exciting of the thrice-weekly concerts was that involving both Bernard Haitink and Gidon Kremer...
...Haitink, who had been conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for more than twenty years, led the BSO in a performance of the Prelude to the First Act of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnburg, the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and Brahms' First Symphony. Kremer joined the orchestra as soloist in the concerto...
...calculated than that of its cousins, but the tension is not uniformly kept up through the inner movements, although I appreciate the subtle interplay between the inner voices that abounds in the second and third movements (including a wayward timpani mallet about 18 seconds into the second movement). While Haitink receives my praise for sustaining the momentum in the sublime cello theme of the third movement, I still wish that he had felt just a little more free to lose himself in its glory. Typically, he avoids excessively punching the off-beat accents in the final movement, but compared...
...cannot help but hold the recording of the fourth symphony against the standard of Carlos Kleiber's intensely gripping account on Deutsche Grammophon. Haitink does not fare badly at all, and his treatment of the elaborate passacaglia structure of the fourth movement is thoroughly admirable, including the difficult horn chorale...
Perhaps not too surprisingly, it is in the ancillary "filler" pieces where Haitink really shines with surprising passion - the Tragic and Academic Festive Overtures, the two serenades, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, and the only three Hungarian dances that Brahms rescored for orchestra. The two overtures have plenty of flair to spare, and the Hungarian dances, number one in particular, simply scintillate. Haitink gives sensitive accounts of both serenades, and the jaunty conclusion of the Serenade in D deserves special mention...