How Bernard Haitink let the music stand on its own considerable merits

Because his technique was so unfussy and drew so little attention to itself, it was almost universally underestimated. With a minimum of motion, Bernard Haitink could give you every single particle of information you needed. I always could play with confidence and freedom under his baton, and he could effortlessly guide the orchestra in a subtle ebb and flow of tempo. I read once that he admonished student conductors, saying “Don’t distract the musicians — they are very busy!”

No matter how familiar he was with the music he was performing, he never became jaded. There was not a shred of artifice or mannerism in his interpretations. He let the music stand on its own considerable merits, unlike a number of conductors who seem to grow bored even by the greatest masterpieces and need to artificially inseminate them with eccentric interpretive touches.

Another aspect of his greatness was his tact and intelligence in dealing with the musicians in his charge. There are awkward moments from time to time in rehearsal when a musician fails to play to the standards expected, which in an ensemble like the Chicago Symphony is quite high. We all screw up sometimes, and sometimes these transgressions are embarrassingly public, especially for principal players. If too much is made of it in the high-pressure environment of our orchestra, I have seen the musician’s confidence compromised; it may lead to the same passage not coming off in the performance.

Haitink had a unique way of dealing with this. He would have us play the passage again, but make no mention of the failing we had just heard. He would say something along the lines of "Could we try that again, and perhaps we can get just a little more of a dolce quality?" He preserved the dignity and confidence of the musician who had just come up short, and quite possibly made the future performance just a bit more secure and successful. It was at once deeply humane, and shrewd, and completely in the service of the music, which is a pretty good summation of the man.

I still treasure the memory of a conversation I once had with Maestro Haitink. On a Chicago Symphony European tour more than a decade ago, he threw a party for the orchestra at a winery just outside Vienna. It is relevant to the story to mention that one of the programs featured Shostakovich’s last symphony. I arrived a little late, and it turned out the only seat still available was at the “adult table,” right next to Haitink!

I was nervous; I don’t dine with great conductors very often. So I drank a goodly quantity of wine a bit too quickly. As a result, I found myself saying to him, "Maestro, I find it so meaningful that we are playing Shostakovich’s final symphony with you. I think of it as the last of its kind, the last traditionally structured symphony — sonata allegro first movement, slow movement, scherzo, finale — in our repertoire. Just as you are the last of your kind, the last conductor we see who has a living memory of the world our repertoire came from, Europe before Hitler blew it all apart."

Through my wine haze, I realized that I had basically called our revered host a fossil. Before I could regret it, his eyes lit up and told me stories about his life as a boy in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. His father was an electrical engineer, responsible for Amsterdam’s electrical plant. He was pressured by the Dutch resistance to shut the city down, but if he had, he would have had to answer to the Gestapo. He was in an impossible double bind, and it broke him; Maestro Haitink lost his father shortly after the war.

Then he said something absolutely extraordinary; the most amazing part of which is that he seemed to believe what he was saying: “You know, I was nothing special back in my school days. There were so many of my peers that were much more talented than I was. But they were all Jewish boys, and they were murdered. I was all that was left — that is why I enjoyed the career I have had.”

I am so grateful to have worked with Maestro Haitink.