Bernard Haitink’s 1979 Concertgebouw account of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony was both a change from and an advance on his 1966 Concertgebouw recording (now available as part of a nine-disc box, 8/94). Broader in pace and warmer-toned, it retained much of the earlier reading’s classical integrity whilst at the same time paying more attention to the music’s Schubertian aspect. Haitink does not go as far down that particular road as Karajan does in his deeply reflective, pantheistically charged 1971 Berlin Philharmonic version. The velvet sonorities of the Berlin performance (quite different from the Concertgebouw’s sharper-edged way even in sostenuto passages) will not please everyone, of course, though it has to be said that the Berliners’ quiet, affective glow of colour is part and parcel of a reading which is deeply thought through and of a piece with itself. (The Adagio is especially fine, more innig than the Haitink and more of a piece.) But with neither Klemperer nor Bohm on absolutely top form in their recordings of the Seventh, the return of this later Haitink recording to the catalogues is both timely and welcome for those in search of a fine, middle-of-the-road, mid-price recording of the symphony.'