This release shows that you can teach an old dog new tricks. Like Abbado in his Berlin cycle for DG, Haitink seems to have taken a page from the “authenticity” movement. Unlike his previous Concertgebouw recording, the first-movement exposition repeat is back in, and the funeral march moves smartly at a true walking pace. At a bit more than 14 minutes, that’s a couple of minutes slower than before, and given the fact that Haitink is not by nature a “Sturm und Drang” Beethoven interpreter in the style of Furtwängler or Barenboim, that’s all to the good. Tempos are fleet and steady, accents are somewhat clipped, and rhythms are nicely sprung throughout. The result has an almost balletic grace and clearly relates the music to the two earlier symphonies. Unlike Abbado however (on CD as opposed to video), Haitink avoids insipidness by giving sufficient prominence to the brass and timpani and by keeping textures crystal clear. Indeed, the dry acoustic combines with exceptionally well-judged sectional balances to offer an amazing level of audible detail in even the most heavily scored passages.
What this performance lacks, though, is any sense of struggle, of revolutionary character–in short, of the heroism of the title. In a sense, the playing of the LSO is almost too pretty. For example, there’s no strain or conflict in the first-movement development section. The big dissonant climax at its center comes and goes with nary a surface ripple, and the return of the main theme in the coda (never mind the unfortunate decision to stick to Beethoven’s original scoring and cut off the trumpets in mid-melody) certainly doesn’t sound exultant. Nor, despite the lively tempo, does the funeral march acquire an extra degree of edge.
Part of the problem stems from a lack of weight to the bass lines, a decades-old problem endemic to the London orchestras at various times (an exception was the Philharmonia under Klemperer). Haitink’s approach works best, as you might expect, in the proto-Mendessohnian textures of the scherzo, and in the jolly finale. But even here, the minor-key sections should create a stronger contrast with their more contented surroundings.
The same observations apply to this performance of Leonore No. 2: the playing is beautiful and the performance is unfailingly musical, but you’d be hard pressed to guess what the opera is about from the impact that this leaves. In the final analysis, I’m of two minds about this disc. There’s a lot here to enjoy. The approach has the great virtue of being very pleasing to the ear, and I respect both Haitink for his willingness to rethink his interpretation and the LSO for its evident enthusiasm in giving him what he requires. There are many passages, particularly in the first movement, where the string articulation does wonders to keep the music moving deftly forward. And as suggested above, the engineering fits the approach extremely well. But at the same time, there’s much more emotional intensity in the music than this performance reveals, and for most if not all listeners I suspect that that will be a more significant issue. This must have been an interesting and pleasant night at the symphony, but more for what it says about Haitink and evolving performance practice in modern orchestras than for any light it sheds on Beethoven’s Third Symphony.
