Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 7 - Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink - Challenge Records CC 72895 (2021)

Bernard Haitink was born and educated in Amsterdam. His conducting career began at the Netherlands Radio where in 1957 he became the Chief Conductor of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. The links between Bernard Haitink and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra have withstood the test of time, even when his career was taking him all over the world. One fine example of this was Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust in 1998, later issued on CD (CC 72517). He returned on 15 June 2019, when he gave his very last concert in Amsterdam, with Bruckner Symphony no. 7, a work that has always been especilly dear to him.

Tracks

1 Symphony No. 7 I. Allegro moderato 21:37
2 Symphony No. 7 II. Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam 21:35
3 Symphony No. 7 III. Scherzo. Sehr schnell 10:49
4 Symphony No. 7 IV. Finale. Bewegt, doch nicht schnell 14:06

Total time 68:10

Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony was one of the pieces that Bernard Haitink, the now retired conductor, was always very happy to put on the program. Presumably because he thought it impossible ever to be able to shape this colossus completely after his own ideal image. One has to fear that afterwards he always thought 'wieder nicht gelungen' ('again not succeed'), as his famous colleague Bruno Walter presumably said to a concertmaster after yet another attempt to guide Mozart's Fortieth Symphony perfectly. Haitink has conducted Bruckner Seven with many orchestras, ranging from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 1961 to the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2019. This list also includes the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). He conducted the orchestra performing the Seventh three times - in 1965, 1972 and 2019. Those performances and CD recordings were by far the most memorable of the RPO. On 15 June 2019 Haitink unofficially said goodbye to Amsterdam and the Netherlands after 64 years as conductor, conducting the RPO in the Seventh one more time. He conducted the Seventh later in Lucerne (Switzerland) with the Vienna Philharmonic, for a considerably less enthusiastic audience than in Amsterdam. These latest performances were very interesting from a musicological point of view, because Haitink again opted for the score version by Leopold Nowak (with the cymbal strike in the Adagio) and not for that of Robert Haas (without cymbal strike). Many have tried to put into words what made Haitink such an exceptionally good Bruckner conductor. It has to do with his natural, intuitive understanding and overview of the great structures in music, the tension arcs, as it is so beautifully called: the idea of ebb and flow, which is difficult to explain. You either have it or you don't. In any case, he felt 'strangely enough at home' in Bruckner from the start, he tells Niek Nelissen in the interview book ‘If you can call it a profession’. It's mind boggling to think that in 1960 he started at the RPO with the Ninth Symphony, Bruckner's last and most spiritual. Starting with the Ninth he was advised against by everyone. Haitink, 31 years of age, didn't care and only realized many years later how overly confident that must have been at the time. One can also say that this choice was the only right one, based on the idea that Bruckner himself had also jumped into limbo in that crushing piece. The truly historic performance of the Seventh with the RPO has now been released on CD. Due to the charged nature of the event, it is hardly possible to listen to it with dry eyes. It is clear that the recording with the RPO can certainly stand next to the other recordings Haitink made of the piece, or even surpass them, assuming that this is a genuine live event and nothing has been edited to the performance. There is a cut in the closing applause which here, after a silence of ten seconds, lasts 25 seconds instead of the nine minutes I counted after the concert. Bernard Haitink conducted Anton Bruckner's (1824-1896) Seventh Symphony with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (1961), BBC Symphony Orchestra (1965, 1966, 1994), London Philharmonic Orchestra (1968 and 1971), New York Philharmonic (1975), Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (1981), Staatskapelle Dresden (1991), European Youth Orchestra (1997), Vienna Philharmonic (1997, 2019), London Symphony Orchestra (1998), Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2007) and the Berlin Philharmonic (2019) - and almost fifty times with the Concertgebouw Orchestra between 1961 and 2017.
Erik Voermans – parool.nl (translation)

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