Haitink records Bruckner's No. 7 on new CSO label

With principal conductor Bernard Haitink now in his fall residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, his second recording for the new CSO Resound label is a lasting testament to the eminent Dutch conductor's artistry.

The recording, of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, was officially released through retail outlets last month in standard and hybrid SACD formats, as well as online via digital music distributors iTunes, Amazon, eMusic and Rhapsody.

This is Haitink's and the CSO's second recording on the orchestra's new in-house record label. The debut CD (released in May) of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 received ecstatic reviews from newspapers and magazines in the United States and overseas.

Locally, the recording is available at Barnes & Noble and Borders Books and Music, as well as at the Symphony Store, located just off the Symphony Center lobby at 220 S. Michigan Ave. You can also go to www.cso.org and click on "Shop Symphony Store" to order it.

Haitink has been conducting Bruckner's symphonies for more than four decades, so with this performance he brings a masterly touch to a score he knows intimately. Bruckner's symphonies are a wildly uneven lot (no thanks to several of his students and admirers, who "improved" several scores of the Austrian composer's late in his life and after his death).

But the Seventh Symphony is one of Bruckner's true masterpieces. Premiered in Leipzig, Germany, in 1884, when Bruckner was 60, it received great public acclaim at that first concert and was immediately performed in many of Europe's leading music capitals. The score calls for the largest orchestral forces Bruckner had used up to that time, and yet the music contains sections of Mozartean refinement, in particular the second movement, a 22-minute adagio that is arguably the finest music he ever wrote.

Sir Georg Solti conducted a lot of Bruckner with the CSO in the final decade of his life, but he came to this music rather late in his career, and the result usually was uneven: powerful, episodic interpretations, but lacking in cohesiveness and the spirituality that Bruckner, a noted church organist, put to paper as a composer.

Haitink brings that spirituality to this performance, all 67 minutes of it. To many listeners, Bruckner is an acquired taste; the same can be said for conductors attempting this music. It takes years of experience to get it right, and Haitink has had that experience while conducting orchestras in Amsterdam, London, Berlin and elsewhere. He brings this wisdom to the CSO; he's the ideal person to have in charge of the orchestra while it selects its next music director (hopefully, by next summer).

Two weeks ago, Haitink conducted Orchestra Hall performances of Gustav Mahler's dramatic Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, which would seem a logical addition to the CSO Resound catalog. But the orchestra's three-year recording deal doesn't include a predetermined "playlist." Haitink, the musicians and management have decided to wait until the concerts are completed to determine if the performance is worthy of preservation on CDs and digital downloads.

It is a smart strategy, with only the finest performances saved for posterity. Hopefully, last month's Mahler Sixth will pass muster, as well as next spring's Haitink-conducted performances of Mahler's First and Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth symphonies.