Haitink, Chicago SO, Royal Festival Hall

The Bruckner half of the programme appeared to have come early as Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony sternly, doggedly, processed through the introduction of Haydn’s Symphony No.101 ‘Clock’. It was a portent of things to come. The prognosis was not good. A case of terminal seriousness would eventually render the performance irreversibly moribund.

Haydn thrives – no, depends – upon a light touch. Furthermore his wit is built upon an element of surprise. Neither was forthcoming as Haitink’s Chicagoans launched somewhat poker-faced into the main presto of the first movement. A steady tempo (which was Haitink’s idea of presto) can be made to seem fleet-footed by virtue of less weight on the string and a smiling attitude. Listening to this performance you would never guess that it is in fact the air of frivolity that delivers the surprise after that weighty introduction. There was no joy in the playing: just efficiency.

Admittedly, a modicum of poise was forthcoming in the tick-tocking Andante though by now not even the brightening counterpoint of the solo flute could alleviate a growing sense that time was running out. The audacious general pause and modulation towards the end of the movement is another Haydn joke – as if the clock has stopped and needs a gentle smack to restart it. It’s all in the timing – and Haitink’s dutiful pause suggested that the joke had passed him by.

There aren’t too many jokes in Bruckner, of course – least of all the Seventh Symphony - and Haitink is an experienced and safe pair of hands in this music. But safe is not inspiring and inspiring is when you arrive at the coda of the finale feeling like you’ve undergone a long spiritual journey. Many in the audience plainly felt that – or felt something – since they were on their feet cheering the veteran Dutchman to the rafters. All I can say is that last season I heard a young man less than half Haitink’s age, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, plumb greater depths and assume greater heights than this performance even came close to achieving.

So what was missing? Well, firstly the Festival Hall is too sterile an acoustic to be ideally Brucknerian and so one must create an illusion of space and reverberance in the playing. In practical terms that means a more intense response to pianissimi, a greater sense of stasis and timelessness, of expectation, in such moments as the recapitulation of the opening cello theme starting mid-sentence, as it were, as if half-remembered as something significant but growing and growing in intensity over a timpani pedal-point until the full import of the memory becomes overwhelming. It’s a heart-stopping moment which here simply failed to ignite from within.

And so we journeyed onward, enjoying the landscape but not really engaging with it in any truly meaningful way. It was the kind of performance that served the piece but didn’t really unlock it; one felt that it had unfolded rather than evolved. Haitink has earned our respect over the years and his great modesty should serve as an example to those who think that they come before the music. But sometimes, as here, it takes more than passive intervention to bring the notes off the page.

In the closing pages of the great slow movement Bruckner marks Wagner’s passing with a lament in Wagner tubas. It was an ironic comment on the performance that even the seemingly infallible Chicago brass players should have experienced a notable lapse in intonation at this critical moment. It seemed that the force was not with us.