Bernard Haitink: the most important conductor of our time?

Amos says:

By most accounts, BH was a tasteful, knowledgable, and thoughtful conductor. To suggest that his record sales lagged those of his contemporaries was due to a dearth of interviews is, imo, to conveniently overlook the usual lack of “apt” vitality in performances he led live and in-studio recordings. Perhaps the best evidence is offered by comparing the performances led by his predecessors with the CO van Beinum & Szell. Although BH & GS are often lumped together as “classical” conductors their performance results couldn’t be more different with the latter delivering consistently more innervating results.
Based on comments from members of the orchestra it is undeniable that BH served a vital role in maintaining standards at the BSO in the period between JL and AN. That said there was never a sense of a great conductor leading a great orchestra in must hear performances.
To suggest that BH’s tenure on the world stage was in any way a seminal event is to me an indictment on the state of conducting in the modern age. In thinking about what I regard as the golden age of conducting the most generous comparison to BH would be Adrian Boult and I find the latter much more convincing in terms of delivering sober but memorable performances. Perhaps we should take BH at his own assessment that his early elevation to lead the CO was due in part to those who were lost during the war. I hope John Borstlap weighs in.

David K. Nelson says:

I never heard Haitink in person but there are certainly many splendid recordings of his that I prefer and am glad to have, Bruckner in particular. Because even his early recordings all still sound very good his reputation will live on for a time because he’ll be continued to be listened to and judged by our own ears rather than just reputation and the written word.

But I cannot quite come to consider him important, or the most important. The reputations of conductors are relatively fleeting in the sense that there are so many more music lovers who seek out and listen to recordings of vocalists of the past, including the distant past, and to a lesser extent to recordings of violinists, pianists and cellists of the past than there are for recordings by conductors of the past.

I find it a little ironic, but not surprising, that the lasting reputations of conductors seems to rely so much on the sound of their recordings. We still listen to recordings of Walter, Stokowski, Reiner, to some extent Beecham, Boult, Barbirolli, Monteux, and Szell (all of whom began recordings in the 78 rpm era, and arguably in some cases did their finest work on 78s) because their stereo recordings still sound relatively modern, or at least not alienatingly antique. Their reputations remain strong, perhaps are even enhanced. Toscanini’s towering reputation seemed to fade with the onset of stereo, because for all practical purposes he did not record in stereo. By 1960 even his later and best sounding recordings sounded quite dated, as did those (with a few stereo recording exceptions) of Rodzinski, Cantelli, Mitropoulos, Koussevitzky, E. Kleiber with him — all highly praised, lauded, even revered, during their lives, but who recorded either very little in stereo or none at all, and thus on the back burner once their recordings took more effort to listen to. Except for a select few collectors or connoisseurs, they have become mostly just names, respected but we tend to get fuzzy about how they should be ranked.

But even as just names, and here I (finally) get to my point, we remember Koussevitzky, Stokowski, Mitropoulos and some others more than we listen to them because of their interest in and championing of new music and new composers. I suspect it is Beecham’s ground-breaking Delius recordings that get listened to most now; his reputation as a Haydn conductor has faded.

That to me is what makes a conductor of the past “important.” And that is why to my way of thinking Haitink is not so important as our host posits in his essay.

Frank Flambeau says:

In my opinion, Daniel Barenboim is the best of our times.

MR says:

An interesting question. Upon learning of his passing, my response here was: “I always found the sound he coaxed from orchestras to be the most exquisite.” It was if he cleansed the atmosphere of air and light pollution so one might actually see all the stars and planets. Another conductor I associate with exceptionally exquisite music making is Carlo Maria Giulini, so it was serendipitous learning how Haitink originally substituted for that maestro with the same esteemed orchestra he came to inherit. One wonders how much time the two may have spent together, and how much Haitink may have learned from Giulini. I’m also curious to know what music Haitink may have admired from different genres and cultures. My sense is that he had powerful influences beyond the immediate realm of Western classical music itself, perhaps even from other disciplines he admired if not necessarily mastered, adding richness and depth to his musical vision.