Reviewing Bernard Haitink's 1965 account of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony, Deryck Cooke wrote: ''The more I listen to Haitink's Bruckner performances, the more I wonder if he isn't, really, after all, the answer to a Brucknerian's prayers''. On another occasion he wrote: ''And then there are Haitink's own great virtues: his feeling for the chaste nobility of Bruckner's music; his objective expressive intensity, without any undue intrusion of his own personality; and his preservation of an unswerving line, with only those slight tempo modifications necessary to allow the music to make its full expressive effect''.
Whether or not conductors actually get better with age, the best invariably do wonderful work when they are young. Certainly, the Bruckner and Mahler recordings Haitink made in the late 1960s and early 1970s come into this category. I knew from the original LPs that this is a cycle to be reckoned with; what I didn't anticipate was how stimulating and exciting the process of reacquaintance would be.
Barenboim's cycle, recorded between 1972 and 1981, is also impressive. As early as 1975 he was showing a precocious mastery of the Ninth Symphony. He is very fine, too, in the Second and Sixth Symphonies. Some Brucknerians will also prefer him to Haitink in the opening movement of the Seventh and—the great Adagio apart—in the Eighth as well.
That said, I haven't found the Barenboim cycle so interesting to come back to. In the first place, it is much more predictable orchestrally. Technically—note for well-tuned—the Americans are arguably superior to the Amsterdam players. (The Chicago strings are certainly creamier, more full-bodied.) Yet there is little here to match the astonishingly passionate, highly-strung playing Haitink draws from the Concertgebouw players. (Interestingly, by the end of the Concertgebouw cycle one seems to know the sound of individual front-desk musicians, much as one might know the voices of masked actors at the end of the Oresteia.)
There is also the question of the conductors' different temperaments and methods. When Barenboim began his Chicago cycle in the 1970s he was probably as experienced as Haitink when he launched his Amsterdam cycle in the early 1960s. Barenboim's performances, though, seem a good deal more self-conscious. (I find his emergent Berlin cycle for Teldec more interesting.) Barenboim may be the more intuitive musician; but on this particular journey it is Haitink who is the more incisive leader. Right from the start, you sense here is a man who briefed his team, read the map and is raring to go.
The Haitink cycle began in 1963 with Symphony No. 3. (Not in 1960 as a misprint in the booklet suggests.) Unfortunately, the LP pressings made a poor job of relaying what turns out on CD to be a robust, fierce, slightly dry-sounding recording. The performance itself is also rather fierce, with more multiple-gearing of tempos than Haitink was to allow himself in later years. The playing is alert, rousing even, though inclined to edginess. This is partly to do with the sound of the post-war Concertgebouw (marginally more Francophone in those days), partly a matter of an as yet not-quite-symbiotic bond between Haitink and the players. The text, a surprising choice in 1963 but a good one, is that of Bruckner's first revision (1877) in Oeser's edition (1950). This omits the quick coda to the Scherzo, added in January 1878, which Nowak subsequently printed (Critical Edition, 1980) and which Haitink includes on his VPO re-make). But I prefer the movement as it was, without that sudden scamper for the tape. The Fourth Symphony followed in 1965. This suggests some deepening and refining of the bond between conductor and orchestra. I won't be throwing out my Klemperer or Bohm recordings (EMI, 12/88 and Decca, 3/93); but, as Cooke suggested, this is a very fine performance. The Scherzo is particularly exciting, though the transfer to CD throws up an ugly edit at a most inopportune moment: the subito pianissimo to a low G flat at fig.E (1'22''). Perhaps it was always there; if so, I never noticed. For all its limitations, LP was a more discreet medium. CD here is about as subtle as The Sun.
For the most part Philips's CD remastering is an advantage, realizing, as some of their drabber mid-1960s LPs never could, just how vivid and astonishingly natural these Concertgebouw-played, Concertgebouw-made recordings are. But, then, these are proper recordings: the coming together of a fine hall, a superb orchestra properly balanced at source by the conductor, and a recording team that knew everything about good sound but nothing about 'hi-fi'. (There are no booklet credits but most of these recordings are the work of the late J. P. F. van Ginneken, as scrupulous, principled and musicianly a recording producer as you could wish to find.)
The Ninth Symphony (also 1965) came surprisingly early in the cycle. The performance explains why. Both conductor and orchestra play the symphony as if in the grip of a deep compulsion. Rarely have I heard the score so completely opened out and 'sounded' as it is here. The orchestral response alone has a terrific explicitness and immediacy. As for Haitink, he plays the work very dramatically, as a symphonic psycho-drama, ''a vastation'' as thinkers and theologians of Bruckner's time often termed breakdown and purgation of the spirit.
When it comes to the great central tetralogy, Symphonies Nos. 5-8, there are some problems. Most problematic is the Eighth Symphony. The Seventh has a quick first movement; but it survives. Not so the Eighth. The first movement just about hangs together, thanks to some finely concentrated playing at critical junctions. But the Scherzo is absurdly quick, as is the finale. This is quite a downer; a Bruckner cycle without a crowning account of the Eighth is a poor thing. Wand and Karajan are at their finest here; not so Jochum (DG, 8/91), who even manages to wreck the Adagio with a crazily accelerating tempo. Haitink doesn't do that; but his performance isn't ideal.
Curiously, Haitink's account of the Sixth Symphony is less of a problem than it is with some rivals. The recording is exceptionally fine—everything thrillingly immediate, finely 'terraced'. It is a quicker performance than Klemperer's classic version for EMI (3/90). Cooke thought it too quick in the outer movements. I wonder if he would have been quite as critical had he been able to judge the entire canvas; there is no doubt that the performance has more character and sinew on CD than it did on LP. The Adagio always sounded well and so it remains, the keening Dutch oboe and bright trumpets the perfect foil for the Rembrandt-colourings of the strings and lower brass.
Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 5 and 6 were the last to be recorded. (Haitink actually ended with this rousing account of No. 1.) They are all very fine. This is one of the best Fifths ever made; dramatic where Karajan is epic but fascinatingly alive and well integrated. The Second Symphony also receives an exceptional performance (the text, as elsewhere in the cycle, is Haas) though Haitink and the orchestra fail to make the case for the bizarre interlude in the slow movement between figs. C and E (cut by Karajan, who also uses Haas) with its fussy figurations and nightmarish semitonal ascent for the solo horn.
Wand's mid-price Cologne RSO cycle on RCA has an unsatisfactory Sixth and a moderate-sounding Fifth. There is also the oddity of the First Symphony in the bloated rewrite of 1890-1. But there are great strengths, in particular exceptionally fine accounts of the Second, Third, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. Karajan is even more consistent; the Sixth Symphony sounds as if it has been recorded at a read-through, but much of the rest is glorious—the three early symphonies surprisingly fresh and intense. Jochum is a special case. Barenboim's Chicago cycle is not generally in the same league as these top contenders. By contrast, the Haitink set is extremely competitive. You will need a supplementary account of the Eighth; but is this too much to ask when the set as a whole is being offered, new-minted, at a knock-down price. '