Haitink's re-recording of Mahler's epic offers a more substantial challenge to existing recommendations than Leif Segerstam's game attempt on Chandos. Where Segerstam and his Danish forces were perforce light-toned and rustic, Haitink and the Berlin Philharmonic are all textural weight and grim determination. As captured by the Philips technicians, their sound is appropriately dark and solid, extremely impressive in its palpably immediate way. That the sound-stage becomes a trifle opaque at high volume is no doubt a feature of the chosen venue, the Berlin Philharmonie. Orchestral execution is, by and large, spectacular, predictably assured in every department; and yet, unlike their rivals in Vienna, Amsterdam or London (the LSO have recorded this work several times to great effect), the Berliners do not automatically come up with characterful wind playing. They have to be prodded, and this is not Haitink's way in his new cycle, where the music's dark, granite-like aspect is persistently stressed at the expense of local colour. After Bernstein's signposted 'involvement' (CBS), Haitink can seem unduly phlegmatic.
The gigantic opening movement takes a little while to settle here. Like Segerstam, Haitink is dangerously slow, less indulgent than one has heard him in concert, with little joie de vivre in the rollicking march. There is some curious phrasing and even a minor collapse of ensemble at 34'26'' just before the high timpani strokes at the end of movement. In the early stages, the balance favours trumpets at the expense of the trombones, and there is a general tendency to focus on perceived 'solos' at the expense of 'accompanimental' detail. With timpani so backwardly placed, the percussion highlighting is sometimes disturbing.
Haitink is squarer than Bernstein in the 'flower' intermezzo—so was Abbado on DG—and the engineers do him no favours in the 'animal' scherzo, failing to distance the notably unevocative, vibrato-clogged 'posthorn' passages. As in his 1960s Concertgebouw reading on Philips, Haitink seems deliberately prosaic. And yet, having unnaturally subdued Mahler's parodistic wildlife, he winds up in fine, Wagnerian style. The Nietzsche movement (insufficiently hushed here) is not inimical to Haitink's rather dour approach, and what a pleasure it is to hear Jard van Nes in music she has often sung in the concert-hall only to be supplanted by 'bigger' names in subsequent recordings. She is placed close to the microphone, which seems to be the modern fashion. The Tolz Boys' Choir promises much in the fourth movement, but the woodwind contribution is neither as strong nor as full as it needs to be; Haitink again proves reluctant to intervene and articulate.
Doubts are swept aside by the sixth movement. A wonderful, intimate opening, superbly controlled, is just the start of a penetrating, long-breathed account (25'53'') which had me wanting to revise my rather negative response to the earlier movements—even if the entry of cor anglais and horn at 5'21'' is less than wholly enchanting. Where, under Segerstam, this music had seemed to lurch forward between sections, drained of purpose, Haitink keeps a tight rein throughout, less obviously affectionate than his rivals but ultimately at least as satisfying. Straightforward and dedicated to the end, he eschews both Solti's excited accelerando (Decca) and Abbado's funereal apotheosis. While brass intonation is markedly better than it was in Amsterdam, Volker Straus, Haitink's experienced producer, allows the section to dominate the closing pages.
To sum up: although I imagine many listeners will feel Haitink misses something of the bucolic charm of the inner movements, much of this concluding Adagio is glorious. Ironically, Philips fail to provide a timing for it anywhere in the packaging and I had the momentary impression they had forgotten to include it at all. There is, however, a detailed note by Michael Kennedy, and the promise that the recording will also be released on LaserDisc and VHS video.'