Heather Harper, soprano
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, conductor
The London Philharmonic Orchestra has a long and enviable recording history and this previously unreleased concert recording documents some of the great moments under their former principal conductor Bernard Haitink (1967-1979).
As Principal Conductor, Bernard Haitink presided over some of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s most memorable and exciting years. Live accounts of great British music by Elgar and Britten from the late 70s and early 80s on this release captures the dynamic of this special relationship - one of the greatest in London’s history. One of the most ardent of supporters for the British music, Haitink is the driving force behind this wonderful combination of Auden’s poetry, Britten’s music and Heather Harper’s extraordinary vocal agility and incisiveness. The serious titles aside Hunting Father’s is at all times a joy - apt, energetic, dramatic, sad, humbling, thoughtful - and this performance has an intensity, and sheer ‘rightness’ that it leaps across the 65+ years since it was written and 25+ years since it was recorded, as if it was written for today.
Unlike the LSO's own label, the London Philharmonic's is supplementing new recordings with some classic performances from the archives, here a trio of British works taped in concert by the BBC.
As one of the few top continental conductors to take British music seriously in the 1970s, Bernard Haitink brought a refreshingly internationalist view to the works of Elgar, and his performances of both the Introduction and Allegro from 1984 and Enigma Variations from two years later put the music firmly in the European symphonic tradition, particularly its debt to the barline-defying metres and melodic shapes of Brahms.
These two works also have the best recordings, from the Festival Hall and Albert Hall respectively, with the latter's organ sonorously crowning the superbly characterised Enigma. Britten's Our Hunting Fathers, from a Prom in 1979 (the year Haitink's distinguished 12-year tenure as the orchestra's principal conductor ended) sounds rougher and imperfectly balanced.
But to hear Heather Harper in a work she very much made her own is compensation enough. She brings the texts - by Auden, Ravenscroft and Anon - vividly to life.
