Haitink’s recording of Rheingold is characterised by a strong team of singers, headed up by Theo Adam who near the end of his career sung a noble, dangerous Alberich and James Morris as one of the last century’s greatest Wotans, and Haitink’s wonderful conducting.
Maurizio Pollini and Emil Gilels are, by some distance, the two greatest pianists whom I have been lucky enough to see in concert - Gilels just the once, but Pollini a number of times.
Of the current crop of players, I was very impressed by Yuja Wang, whom I saw at last year’s Brighton Festival. Once you get past the short dresses and six-inch heels, you can see that she is a brilliant pianist.
Haitink was also a fabulous Ravel interpreter. This is a great set of his Philips recordings. The 1973 recording here of “Rhapsodie Espagnole” is my single favourite piece of classical music ever. The orchestral version of “Alborada del gracioso” is definitive for me as well.
I’m embarrassed to say I don’t think I have any Ravel recordings with Haitink. I’ll have to remedy that.
I also like Haitink’s Bruckner and Mahler (I have the complete Philips box sets of LPs for both). They aren’t necessarily the best versions for any particular symphony, but they are just about always a very solid choice to pull off the shelf to play.
He’s one of my favorites, and Philips mostly recorded him really well. Concertgebouw was the home team after all.
They were so cute together back in 1972. I read somewhere that the reason Martha walked out was Charlse having too many affairs and she got tired of his shenanigans.
But it was so nice to see them together a few weeks ago.