Bernard Haitink marks 90 in Brucknerian style
Our regular readers will remember last year’s Awards issue cover being graced by Bernard Haitink, as the Dutch maestro won the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year. Recently, Haitink was seen celebrating again, this time conducting the LSO in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 and Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony in a concert to mark his 90th birthday. As with last year’s magnificent Mahler recording, the concert at the Barbican revealed that, even as he reaches four score years and ten, Haitink simply gets better with age. ‘This was a magisterial account,’ said the Guardian of the Bruckner in its five-star review, ‘broad and unaffected as always in the familiar Haitink manner, but gradually drawing the listener ever deeper into the symphony’s interior world.’