Up in arms ... Can other conductors rival Haitink in the movement stakes?
Watching Bernard Haitink conduct Beethoven symphonies the other night, I became convinced that concerts were a branch of theatre. Or even ballet.
Musicians' physical movement has always intrigued me. It's an indicator, supposedly, of passion and feeling and being wrapped up in the music. On the other hand, if it's "too much", it looks false, self-conscious and posey. Sometimes you can't help feeling that all that thrashing about is even at some cost to delicacy and precision.
Too little bobbing and swaying, though, and the musician can look cool and mechanical. After all, playing an instrument is unnegotiably a physical act, and if you're going to put some weight on a string, you're going to have to put your back into it.
Observing Haitink was fascinating. Being a conductor is a slightly different case from being a player, of course: the person with the stick is only silent musician in the orchestra, so the body is doing everything. Haitink's sheer economy of movement was amazing. Often, he seemed to be doing very little at all. (This made you wonder about the relationship between the performance and the rehearsal - was that where it was all happening?)
Sometimes, however, at very dramatic moments, he would execute brisk little lateral swerves with his torso or sharp bodily coils that had the effect of whipping the London Symphony Orchestra into a frenzy (albeit a controlled one). His feet never left the floor (I've seen conductors leap) and his back was as straight as a dye (I've seen conductors who primary means of communication seem to be their buttocks).
Occasionally, though, he would half-turn to the first or second violins and we in the audience would be treated to the sight of his profile and his expression of ineffable seriousness, or even, dare I say it, nobility. He really did look like a Wellington marshalling his troops. It was an amazing balletic performance, but the audience was never going to get the best of it. That was reserved for the musicians in the orchestra.
