Bernard Haitink

Mr. Haitink first attracted attention when in 1956 he substituted for Carlo Maria Giulini in a performance of Cherubini’sRequiem with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, as a result of which he was invited to be a guest conductor at some of the orchestra’s regular concerts. Having become principal conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in the following year, he made his American debut in 1958, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and first appeared in Britain in 1959, on a tour with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, with whom he made his first recording during the same year.

Haitink was such a ubiquitous figure in European and American musical life that it would have been easy to take him for granted, but this would have been a major injustice. As his extensive recorded repertoire demonstrates, he stands in the direct line of the great European conductors of earlier generations such as Richter, Nikisch, Weingartner and Mengelberg.