Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink - Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Webern: Im Sommerwind - Haitink (2010) [SACD]

Listeners looking for more swagger should try Reiner, or for bombast, Karajan. But for anyone who wants beauty, depth, respect, and even love in a performance of Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, this recording with Bernard Haitink leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is the one. Haitink clearly knows the piece like the back of his hand; he knows when to push forward — the love music — and when to pull back — the battle music. More than that, Haitink obviously cares about the music, and his performance is not about riding an old war horse to glory but about showing the piece to best effect. The Chicago Symphony delivers a performance of consummate loveliness with silvery strings, characterful woodwinds, brilliant brass, and a rich blend that is all their own. Coupled with what may be the most perfectly realized performance of Webern’s early tone poem Im Sommerwind ever recorded, this disc is well worth hearing by anyone who admires either composer.
– allmusic.com – Jim Leonard
“There was a time in the late Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties that I looked forward to any new recording by conductor Bernard Haitink and his magnificent Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. You almost couldn’t go wrong with his performances because the man always took a sensible approach to the music, and the engineers always captured a rich, resonant sound. After his leaving the Concertgebouw, I sort of lost track of him until now. He was the Principal Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2006 until 2010, and this live recording with the CSO during that time period demonstrates that he hasn’t lost his touch… As always in his interpretations, Haitink takes a rational, measured view of the work, yet he misses none of the big, triumphant moments, sublime serenity, or impish humor. In fact, the conductor’s reading here is not substantially different from his 1970 performance with the Concertgebouw, available in a two-disc, mid-price set from Philips… With Haitink, Strauss’s music rings out most eloquently. However, there is so much going on in Heldenleben, so many transitions and contrasts, that’s hard for any conductor to help the fragments jell or coalesce into a smooth, flowing, meaningful whole. If Haitink doesn’t always hold it together, either, we can hardly fault the conductor.
As a companion piece on the disc, Haitink chose Im Sommerwind (In the Summer Wind) by Anton Webern (1883-1945), another tone poem, this one an ode to Nature written when Webern was about twenty years old. However, Webern never published it, nor did he ever hear it played in his lifetime. He seems to have regarded the work as an early example of his foolish youth, and it would not be until 1962 that anybody would play it. Webern apparently thought he had matured beyond mere musical pictures into more-ambitious, more-modern compositions so kept Sommerwind under wraps during his lifetime. It’s a shame, really, because the music is lovely in every way, and Haitink caresses each and every note.
The CSOR audio engineers recorded the music live in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, in 2008-2009, using fairly close-up miking, especially in Ein Heldenleben. While this avoids most audience noise, it doesn’t always impart much sense of concert-hall ambience to the proceedings (as Haitink’s old Concertgebouw recordings for Philips did). Still, the sound shows up detailed and clean, with good dynamics, air, impact, and transparency. Of minor note, there isn’t a lot of orchestral depth, the upper midrange is a trifle rough and bright, there’s a slight glassiness to the overall sound, and the bass is somewhat lacking.
Nevertheless, the sonic shortcomings are hardly noticeable, and the important thing is that Haitink persuades us that this particular music of Richard Strauss and Anton Webern is highly listenable, even if it is mere tone painting.” -John J. Puccio
– Classical Candor- June 18, 2010
Bernard Haitink has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony in 2006 and appears there often; many of his performances have been issued on CSO Live. Now we have Ein Heldenleben from three concerts in December 2008. It would be intriguing to know how much editing was done to produce this performance: did the CSO not play any one of the three perfectly? Aside from a more sedate view of the battle interlude, Haitink’s view of the score has changed little since his 1970 Concertgebouw Philips recording. The Romantic early Webern, unusual repertory for Haitink on recordings, is taken from no less than four performances in April 2009. From an audio standpoint, these are two of the most successful live CSO recordings.
– ClassicalCDReview.com, June 2010
Ein Heldenleben, Richard Strauss’s tongue-in-cheek musical autobiography remains astonishingly fresh, witty and audacious more than a century after its composition. This live recording continues the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s successful series of releases on their own CSO-Resound house label.
Haitink is a Straussian of long renown, yet here while the Hero’s theme opens imposingly, it lacks that last bit of outsized swagger. The recording also feels a touch overweighted towards the bass end, missing some gleam and brilliance on top. The `Hero’s Adversaries’ are a properly whiny and insignificant lot, though Haitink is perhaps a bit too kind in his delivery of Strauss’s withering depiction of recalcitrant music critics. No complaints about CSO concertmaster Robert Chen’s vividly characterized portrait of `The Hero’s Companion’, his violin tone capturing all her allure, sweetness and mercurial caprice.
The loopy fanfares and off-kilter alarums of `The Hero’s Battles’ come vividly across, aided by clarion brass and daunting percussive force, though, again, Strauss’s antic humor is given rather short shrift. The triumphant reprise of the Hero’s theme makes full impact, however, and the final, impeccably balanced sections are the most successful. The glowing coda, with Chen and principal horn Dale Clevenger providing exquisite playing, is rendered with just the right sense of solace, heart-easing warmth and a bit more introspective sadness than usual.
Webern’s early, late romantic orchestral idyll Im Sommerwind, composed six years later in 1904, makes a generous and unusual coupling and is played with comparable beauty. With one of the world’s leading Strauss orchestras and conductors, this disc is self-recommending, even if it fail to displace the finest performances already in the catalogue, not least Haitink’s 1970 version with the Concertgebouw (Philips) and Fritz Reiner’s touchstone 1954 account with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (BMG/RCA), which still sounds magnificent after more than half a century. -Lawrence A Johnson