Above: Bernard Haitink
Saturday May 10th, 2014 - Webern's Im Sommerwind, Alban Berg's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, and the Beethoven Eroica were on the bill tonight as Bernard Haitink took the podium at Avery Fisher Hall for the first of two New York Philharmonic programmes he'll be conducting this season (upcoming is the Mahler 3rd, May 15th - 17th). Leonidas Kavakos, the violinist de luxe who in recent seasons has played truly impressive Stravinsky and Prokofiev in New York City, was the soloist for the Berg.
My only previous experience of Maestro Haitink's conducting live was when he led a series of performances of Beethoven's FIDELIO at The Met in 1982, the first time I'd ever seen the opera (Shirley Verrett was my first Leonore!). Haitink, now in his 85th year, is a handsome and dapper gentleman, looking elegant in his tails, and spending his life in the realm of great music seems truly to have sustained his vitality. His conducting technique is lively but not theatrical, and he has a depth of feeling and an Old World sense of dedication that made his performance tonight thoroughly gratifying. The audience embraced him at the end of the Eroica with a spontaneous, full-house standing ovation, re-calling him to the stage repeatedly. In a lovely moment, the musicians refused to rise at his signal, instead applauding him vigorously from their seats and creating in instantaneous solo bow, which he so surely deserved.
The Webern Im Sommerwind is a gorgeous miniature tone-poem; as the strings evoke thoughts of gentle summer breezes and fluffy clouds drifting overhead, solo winds become bird calls and we sense the soft rustling of leaves. The harps and horns have their moments as well. Maestro Haitink lovingly shaped the music and the orchestra sounded luminous. Webern's music is only slightly familiar to me thru the score of the Balanchine ballet Episodes, thru some of his lieder sung by the distinctive mezzo-soprano Mira Zakai on her recital disc, and thru Miro Magloire's ballet Echoes. Webern's Im Sommerwind has a very Romantic coloration - it could almost be by Korngold - and stands as an example of the composer's earliest works. It was composed in 1904 when Webern was only 21; his style would later become sparse and angular as he fell under the 12-tone influence of Schoenberg. So it was revelatory to hear this youthful work tonight, a work which in fact was never performed during the composer's lifetime. Im Sommerwind received its world premere in 1962, conducted by Eugene Ormandy. To me it seems it would make an appealing dancework.
Thoughts of dance continued this evening as Leonidas Kavakos took the stage to play Alban Berg's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra; ballet-goers will know this music from the Jerome Robbins setting In Memory Of... Berg in fact was prompted to write this music in memory of Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma (Mahler) Gropius; Manon had died of polio in 1935 at the tender age of 18.
Above: Leonidas Kavakos, who played the Berg tonight with great clarity and dynamic nuance. This violinist has a personal mystique that imbues his playing with a very particular resonance, having an almost spiritual quality. And indeed Mr. Kavakos, tall and lean, wearing his hair long, has something of a monastic air about him. In deep rapport with Maestro Haitink, the violinist summoned up visions of the narrative which Mr. Robbins utilized in creating his ballet: a young girl, stalked by Death, puts up a tremendous fight but is worn down and succumbs. She is then transformed into angelic light. Mr. Kavakos's dreamlike sustaining of the concerto's final note served as a benediction: truly expressive.
And then to the Beethoven; I'm always grateful that my friend Dmitry has things to say about the Beethoven repertoire since to me it's something of a brave new world. I've spent the last five decades so immersed in opera that music which is second nature to most symphony-goers is actually new to me. Of course I have heard the Eroica before, but never really absorbed it. Tonight's performance drew me in, the themes sub-consciously familiar and the performance - except for a slight mishap from the horns early on - was splendid (the hornsmen restored our full faith with truly grand playing thru the rest of the symphony). Maestro Haitink's pacing seemed perfect to me, ever-forward but never rushed: he took only the briefest of pauses between movements, as if he couldn't wait to share the music with us.
The big, sincere ovation at the end was exactly what the Maestro deserved, and now I look forward all the more to his upcoming Mahler 3rd and my first opportnity of hearing Bernarda Fink live.