This, Haitink’s third recording of the Third Symphony, clearly is the least successful. It captures the conductor in singularly dour mood, with plodding tempos and a pervasive heaviness of phrasing in what ought to be Brahms’ most dramatically compact and eruptive symphony. The problems begin at the beginning, with the principal theme ponderously announced, the rhythmic underpinning lacking any sense of forward movement (exacerbated by some of the thickest and most intractable scoring in any Brahms symphony). There’s no lightness and no character to the woodwind writing, which ought to sound as charming as Dvorák, who likely was Brahms’ model here. The same holds true of the slow movement: it seems to take Haitink and his players an age to get through the fussily phrased first theme, though the mysterious central section (that returns in the finale) has a nicely atmospheric feeling.
About the third movement, the less said the better. It’s limp as an overcooked noodle. The finale begins promisingly with a real sense of urgency, but Haitink seems unable to carry the feeling over to the forte eruptions, which get duller and heavier as the movement proceeds, leading to a central climax that has virtually no anger, no impact at all. Throughout, the playing of the LSO is good but lacking in conviction, especially from the woodwinds, who really have the burden of carrying this work. Things get better in the Serenade, which features a beautiful slow movement, but elsewhere the general impression is rather charmless, particularly in the scherzo and finale, which don’t compare to Haitink’s earlier recordings with the Concertgebouw. In short, this is very disappointing, particularly as the first two symphonies in this series were generally quite good.
Sonically, whether on SACD or in regular stereo, the orchestral textures have a dry quality, with the various sections not well integrated, thus failing to achieve a coherent sense of ensemble. This also works against the interpretations, which really would have benefited from that peculiar combination of richness and clarity that Brahms needs but all too often doesn’t get. Pass on this one.
