When Sir Georg Solti began recording Mahler for Decca, John Culshaw found the music made him feel physically sick. Solti's sometimes queasy brand of extrovert intensity is certainly worlds away from Haitink's formal restraint and it has been quite an experience to encounter these fresh, dignified performances en masse. Several of them deserve the 'classic' appellation quite as much as the blatant and punchy alternatives of the octogenarian maestro (Decca) although the pungent Concertgebouw winds can be as much an acquired taste as the Chicagoans' buzz-saw brass. Recording quality is generally spacious and pleasing, remarkably consistent in its unforced naturalness. First though a word of caution. What Philips are offering here is not quite the integral unit implied by the packaging, awarded an Edison award in 1972 and reviewed enthusiastically in February 1979 by RO. Nor have the contents been recoupled with economy in mind. Instead, the record company have simply boxed up the available CD transfers of the symphonies (including Haitink's digital remakes of Nos. 4 and 7) complete with current couplings. The 'cycle' thus occupies 15 CDs: Solti and Kubelik (DG) manage with ten and even Bernstein (DG), despite his supposed longueurs, can be accommodated on 13.
I suppose it might be argued that Haitink's Mahler has acquired greater individuality and resonance over the years. It is music he more obviously 'interprets' today, opting for a consistently darker tone and almost invariably slower tempos. And yet, on record if not in concert, there have been more losses than gains. Only with No. 1 did I feel that Haitink's powerful Berlin Philharmonic remake (Philips (CD) 420 936-2PH, 10/88) was superior to this, his second version with the Concertgebouw. As ever, Haitink elicits playing of impeccable taste, eschewing the opportunities for Technicolour excess in the interests of symphonic continuity; he does make something of the Jewish elements in the slow movement and the finale is reasonably lively. Michael Kennedy admired the exquisite hush of the Concertgebouw strings at the opening of the first movement, but wind intonation is idiosyncratic thereafter and, in the final analysis, Solti, Bernstein and Kubelik are all preferable in their different ways.
The Second Symphony is also less than earth-shattering. Haitink sounds uncomfortable in the opening movement—strictly objective, which sometimes means simply dull. The inner movements are better and Elly Ameling is never unappealing. On the other hand, Aafje Heynis is distinctly uninspired and, with the entry of the chorus, the engineering does begin to show its age. There is no intolerable sense of strain; it is simply that we have grown accustomed to more substantial and detailed sonorities in this music on disc. The Third Symphony was recorded as early as 1966 and again Haitink's inexperience shows in the long opening movement, just a shade po-faced without its usual quota of rits. and rubato, though, to judge from his recent Berlin version, the conductor still feels the music in basically the same way. There is a decent C-trumpet replacement for the posthorn solo in movement three, while Maureen Forrester's ''O Mensch!'' is as fine as any on disc. The last movement is a high point, naturally paced with no forced details; even so the brass at the close are ill-tuned and the massed strings reproduce somewhat edgily. As for No. 4, I must admit to having been unfamiliar with this aptly soft-grained re-recording of 1983. It came as a pleasant surprise to discover in Roberta Alexander a near-ideal interpreter of Mahler's child's-eye view of heaven. That said, I imagine some listeners will find the reading a little bland overall. The wind are not very pointed in the scherzo, although the third movement is as lovely as you would expect. The recording is first-rate.
Haitink's Fifth is curiously uneven. The first two movements are superbly weighty and assured, but as so often the finale seems far too heavy, without the quicksilver articulation you feel the music demands. Although Haitink had yet to adopt the ultra-slow tempo he currently favours, the Adagietto is considerably less persuasive than Bernstein's. The sound is excellent even if the generous acoustic blurs some significant details. I was less happy with the much-acclaimed No. 6. In his DG set, Bernstein offers an elemental experience of the kind rarely achieved in the studio conditions which encourage Haitink to stick to his avowedly classical approach. Like Karajan (also on DG— (CD) 415 099-2GH2, 4/85) and Bernstein himself, Haitink's first movement was less than funereal in 1969, but there is a lack of temperament and a deliberate coolness of response which, to my ears, prevents the music catching fire. On the other hand, as RO has pointed out, Haitink's purposeful classicism will not spoil you for other versions in the way that more idiosyncratic readings have a tendency to do. I would certainly opt for Haitink's cool objectivity in preference to Solti's unrelenting vim and vigour. In No. 7, Solti's brazen approach is more convincing, though Bernstein too is at his very best. Haitink's 1982 remake received a slightly cool press. It has a more modern-sounding recording than its rivals, but sounds effortful and heavy by comparison. Even so, only Haitink's No. 8 could fairly be described as unsatisfactory. The conductor, frequently (understandably?) embarrassed by the music, downplays the vulgarity, and the thin, cool effect is not enhanced by dated recording. Solti's team of soloists and Decca's engineers score over their rivals here and it helps that tact and refinement are not among that conductor's strong points as a Mahlerian.
Haitink's superbly lucid account of the Ninth is sufficiently well known to require little comment from me. Suffice to say it deserves its reputation, is more comfortably recorded than any of Bernstein's, and represents a perfectly valid alternative. You won't find the extravagant unindicated rubato favoured by most interpreters today, but don't let the comparatively relaxed opening fool you into assuming that Haitink will be excessively low-key throughout. This being the Concertgebouw, there is some uneven trumpet tone, but those wonderful strings, placed forward, must be some sort of compensation. Haitink has even made an attempt to find the right sort of bells for the first movement. Only in the Rondo-Burleske did I miss the desperate last-ditch bravado of Bernstein's assaults. Broad and unexaggerated, the finale is as moving as any.
Like Bernstein on DG, Haitink seems unhappy with the torso of the Tenth. Nor would the couplings influence me one way or the other. There are finer accounts of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Kindertotenlieder than Hermann Prey's and in Des Knaben Wunderhorn the more humorous songs sound dreary and sullen: is Shirley-Quirk out of place in this music or is it that Haitink's accompaniments are not ideally deft? He is not the man to convince me that Das klagende Lied deserves more than an occasional airing in its truncated form: this performance is a trifle lacklustre and the distinguished singers are too closely miked. Nevertheless, it's the symphonies that count and it was after all these performances which consolidated Mahler's symphonic reputation in this country. Then as now, they represent a plausible first choice for those ill-at-ease with Bernstein's gut-wrenching theatricality (or indeed the inconsistent efforts of DG's recording engineers working live with three different orchestras in a variety of acoustic settings). The Concertgebouw's honourable tradition of Mahler performance is stoically upheld, but you may want to note that EMI are shortly to offer Tennstedt's more self-consciously cathartic Mahler cycle in boxed form.'