The Chicago Symphony has recorded this symphony at least five times (Haitink, Solti, Abbado, Giulini, and Boulez), and so has Haitink. Only the Boulez/Chicago recording is truly outstanding, while this latest rendition is deathly dull. Haitink is supposed to be a superb Mahler conductor; here he sounds like a barely competent time-beater. Think that’s an exaggeration? Consider one example in detail. The symphony opens “slowly, dragging”, with many modifications of tempo throughout the introduction, all of which Haitink minimizes. The main body of the movement starts “very leisurely”, the result of what should be a barely perceptible accelerando starting a bit from just after Figure 3. From this point, the entire exposition should increase in speed, from that “very leisurely” start to “fresh and lively”, and then just a bit quicker still. Haitink ignores virtually all of these directives.
The music flows on placidly, uneventfully, and boringly. This is true of the entire performance. The scherzo sounds ponderous, the funeral march quite slow, its Klezmer episodes devoid of tang. Even the hysterical opening of the finale manages to be loud without ever sounding nasty or vicious. Doesn’t Haitink care? Doesn’t this music mean anything to him anymore? Has the final peroration ever sounded more dogged, less joyful, than it does here, after 57 relentlessly characterless minutes? Sure, the orchestra plays well–it always does–but there’s only so much they can bring to the table with a conductor operating on autopilot.
Here’s the bottom line. There are few things more exciting in the record business today than the prospect of major orchestras producing their own CDs (and downloads, if you care). But there are two big problems. The first concerns the fact that every major orchestra wants a major-name conductor. Most of them will be old and over-the-hill (we can resort to euphemisms and call them “experienced” if you like). One such is Haitink. However, along with “experience” comes an entire discography, making it hard to justify the umpteenth recording of the same music under the same conductor. Do we really need five Haitink Mahler Firsts? We didn’t even need three (his second recording, on Philips with the RCO, easily was his finest).
Because these recordings are effectively subsidized, and the orchestra owns them, there’s often little pressure to sell them beyond the local market, and the concert-going audience interested in a musical souvenir is a very different consumer from the serious record collector with extensive knowledge of the discography. The CSO is to be commended for seeking quality distribution (Harmonia Mundi USA) and for actively promoting each new release. But if this is what they want to do, then they have to think in terms of reaching that other market of listeners beyond ordinary subscribers to live concerts. So far, they haven’t shown much evidence of having done so.
I say this with one caveat: great work is always its own justification. Haitink’s Bruckner Seventh Symphony was one example, and if this were stupendous, it would be another matter entirely–but it’s not, and anyone with a shred of musicality or knowledge of the discography can hear it within the first few minutes. I suspect that Haitink himself would agree. After all, he was famous for his interviews a couple decades back decrying the glut of new recordings and (by inference) lauding his own restraint in this regard. Now he is one of the very worst offenders, and he deserves to be called out for both his hypocrisy as well as his terminal dullness. I hope someone at the CSO can exercise some better judgment in allocating what are obviously finite resources to the business of making recordings. This great orchestra deserves better.
