"Maybe I Do It Less Good Than You": Bernard Haitink Will Teach You A Thing Or Two About Brahms Third

Comments

[Stiebel]

Haitink, therefore I am.

[El Cajon]

Listen up whenever O.C. posts about Haitink. I followed her recommendation re: BH's conducting the Mahler Third w/ the CSO, got the CD and the recording is one of the most frequently played items on my MP3 gadget, along with Hey Jude and It's All Too Much.

[Sergio]

I would do anything just to have that experience for even just five minutes. It must be awesome!

[Amber]

Amazing: "don't lower your head at crucial moments", "if there's a mistake, it's probably the conductor's fault", "you're not there to criticize them, you're there to give them confidence"...

I wonder if all great conductors understand the same things. This could have come straight from the mouth of that truly great, sometimes mis-understood conductor Dr. Gary Bonner. He is giving his week-long conducting seminar in Riverside, California this week.

[Kevin Edmund Youkilis 4 MVP]

The kids up there are dying a dog's death, they make a mess then the old men barely lifts a hand and the sound changes completely.

[Soubrette]

May I just mention that those boys were gorgeous!

[yappy]

Oh that man is so sweet and nice and wise. Thanks for that clip! Need to dig out Brahms symphonies right away.
And is it just me, or does he totally have the same accent as Dr. Kaufmann?

[Lauren]

"don't lower your head at crucial moments" - pity he didn't follow his own advice when he was in the opera pit... singers had to fend for themselves.

A fine concert conductor but a weak and spiteful man... (IMHO)

[Blue Byrd]

To yappy: Randstad Dutch tends towards clipped vowels, unaspirated stops and a rhotic "r" in syllable-final position that are all fairly distinctive. So no, I wouldn't say Haitink has a cod German accent.

Not trying to be a smartarse, here, just getting something out of my degree in linguistics.

[MarK]

It is hard to tell from this brief video how good a conducting teacher Bernard Haitink really is. He certainly is a wonderful conductor, but here i have a feeling that many of his comments are wasted on most of these youngsters.
The first two of them have a similar problem - they just go through the conducting motions, but i don’t see that they are filled with music completely, body and soul, as they should be. It does not matter whether they actually are or not - they do not project it to the orchestra which means that they cannot be good conductors. Look at each one of them - do you see Brahms’ music speaking through them? I don’t.
The third youngster appears at 2:28 and we can see immediately that his left arm is not being used well, but the rest of his body including his right arm is really “singing” the musical line. Then, at 2:45, when we see him close-up for a few more seconds, we notice that he projects musical feelings quite clearly and he finishes the musical phrase rather beautifully and sensitively. This young man does have a chance!
The fourth guy has a serious technical problem. His conducting keeps falling behind the music. He seems to be following the orchestra rather than leading it. The conductor who follows is useless. Yes, there are times when it is good for conductors to just go with the orchestra, but their beat should still never be behind the music. That is crucial.
In the end of the video the second guy comes back and continues in the same manner as before - moving his arms without any Brahmsian feeling in evidence whatsoever.
It would be nice to find out the third guy’s name and check in a few years whether something good has become of him.