Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Bernard Haitink, London Symphony Orchestra :: Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 5

Moving right along, but where's the drama?

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/09/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Haitink's Beethoven has always been a known commodity -- traditional, impersonal, running to the bland side. For thirty years no one really noticed it, but suddnely a surprise. This speedy, lean Beethoven Fifth sounds much like the lean, speedy Fifths from Abbado and Rattle in 2000. Stripping away depth and meaning has become the fad, and Haitink leads the field, considering that his LSO Live recording sounds better than either Rattle or Abbado, neither of them well served by the engineers.



Everything flows pleasantly along without undue disturbance of the smooth surface (this applies to all three conductors), and although Beethoven's drastic metronome markings aren't adhered to, the pace is far from what Furtwangler or Klemperer knew as Beethoven. There's no thunder in the first movement of the Fifth, no mystery in the transition form the Scherzo to the finale, no heart-stopping ovation when the brass enters in the finale. So I guess everything is in place.



Haitink can't quite bring himself to jump in the water and deliver a period performance of the Sym. #1. He jogs right along, however -- no matter that the introduction to the first movement is makred Molto Adagio -- with a particularly quick dispatch of the slow movement. The LSO doesn't sound as alert as in other installments of this cycle, but they play nicely; you don't get the impression that Beethoven is being deliberately trivialized, which is good.



In all, this is a typical chapter in Haitink's new Beethoven from London, for better or worse. In all fairness, the British critics were very happy.



"

Splendid, Swift Performances of Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 1 F

John Kwok | New York, NY USA | 05/03/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This splendid CD contains two of the most memorable performances I have heard of either symphony - live or recorded - which were recorded by the LSO Live recording team during concerts held in late April 2006 at London's Barbican concert hall. They are also two of the swiftest interpretations I've heard of either symphony, but in a coupling I regard as quite unusual, since this CD opens with the titanic 5th symphony. Haitink's latest interpretation of the 5th Symphony is two minutes faster than Abbado's memorable Deutsche Grammophon recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker, and yet this isn't a rushed performance at all, but an intense, richly textured one replete with ample excellent playing from the strings, winds, brass and tympani (Purists may decry the fact that the well known opening notes of the 1st movement sound less like a ponderous declaration of an impending fate, and more like a brisk staccato announcement, but this, I believe, is an approach which Beethoven himself favored, and one presumably indicated by the late Jonathan Del Mar in his Barenreiter Edition score of this symphony.). Regardless, it is an outstanding recording not only for the superb playing by the London Symphony Orchestra, but it sounds like the best-balanced recording I've heard yet of this popular symphony. In Haitink's capable hands, Beethoven's 1st Symphony sounds less like a work firmly entrenched in the Classical milieu so firmly established by Beethoven's artistic mentors Haydn, and especially, Mozart, and more like one which carries the embryonic seeds of musical motifs which would find their full flowering in Beethoven's later symphonies, most notably the 3rd and 5th symphonies. Haitink's interpretation is among the swiftest I can think of, and one worthy of comparison to Abbado's (his Berliner Philharmoniker cycle) and Harnoncourt's revelatory accounts. There is ample warm, vibrant playing from all of the London Symphony Orchestra's sections, in a recording taken from live performances that is sonically better balanced than virtually any I have heard previously of this symphony. I strongly encourage those of you unfamiliar with Haitink's great Beethoven symphony cyle with the London Symphony to think of purchasing this CD and the rest of this set, preferably in its 6 disk hybrid SACD incarnation for optimal sound quality; regardless you'll be amazed with these excellent performances and the elegant sound quality of these recordings."