Belated debut of Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, a prominent Dutch conductor, will turn 80 next month. His career has spanned more than five decades in the classical music world. Three years ago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five", appointed Haitink as its principle conductor. Every conductor, including Haitink, has a sell-by date, he said, when he declined CSO's offer to be music director in 2007.

Throughout the 2008-2009 season, the CSO has celebrated Haitink's birthday, with seven weeks of subscription programming at the Orchestra Hall in Chicago and three tours to Europe, Asia and New York City's Carnegie Hall. Next weekend, Haitink and the CSO will perform at National Centre for the Performing Arts. Among the "Big Five", the CSO is the only one that has never been to China.

Amsterdam-born conductor Bernard Haitink has had a splendid record throughout his 50-year international conducting career. Before he became principle conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2006, he spent 25 years at the helm of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Netherlands as its music director. Haitink brought the orchestra to the top of the heap.

Haitink previously held posts as music director of the Dresden Staatskapelle in Germany, the Royal Opera in London, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in England and the London Philharmonic.

He is Conductor Laureate of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and has made frequent guest appearances with most of the world's leading orchestras.

Still young on stage
Haitink's hair is white now. His age and exhaustion show after every concert when he walks down from the platform. But when he takes up his baton, they years melt away. It seems that his conducting has not changed since he first began in the 1960s.

He knows his age, but he said his conducting career is different than others' careers in the music area. An 80-year-old conductor is hardly rare in the field. Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini and German conductor Otto Klemperer still performed into their 80s. Leopold Stokowski, well-know for his free-hand conducting style, conducted into his 90s.

Haitink said conductors have a huge advantage. They are not the singers or musicians. In their 80s, a singer's voice goes and a musician's fingers go stiff.

He said conducting technique is less subtle, so they can continue into old age. "I think maybe conducting is not something for young people. I started far too young with a world-famous orchestra. I still have sleepless nights about it sometimes – how was it possible that I could do this and that without any musical or human experience? It is a miracle that I survived," he said.

Haitink enjoyed every moment of cooperation with different talented artists and orchestras. His passion and enthusiasm for classical music bring him back to the stage again and again. "If I were to feel like an old man, I would not be able to do it any more, because conducting takes a lot of physical and mental strength, and I am under the illusion that I can still offer that to musicians."

The Love of opera
In his conducting career, Haitink has conducted the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler, and the complete piano concertos of Beethoven and Brahms, as well as many operas.

But Haitink formally stated in 2004 that he would no longer conduct opera. But he made exceptions in 2007, directing three performances of Parsifal in Zurich in March and April and five of Pelleas et Melisande in Paris in June. "When I'm working with a symphony orchestra – and I'm an extremely lucky man that I'm always able nowadays to work with top orchestras – I think I'm mad to go back to the pit and have all these hassles with the singers and the directors and that whole shouting match!"

It seems opera carries many risks for a conductor, because he depends on the singers and directors in addition to the orchestra.

"Opera can sometimes be below par, because you have all sorts of problems with singers who don't live up to your expectations or who are getting ill and you're having a substitute. The danger factor in opera is that the risk is bigger; there's no doubt. On the other side, the pit can generate an excitement unlike what you would find in a concert hall," he said.

But Haitink conducted the Ring Cycle three times, and the response of an audience after each opera was mind-boggling, he said. "It has such a wave of emotion which, in the concert hall, you only get with Mahler—sometimes--because that's also theatrical music. That isn't to say opera has better music, but the dimensions are different, and it can impress in an enormous way."

Caretaker of orchestras
Haitink stayed a quarter of a century in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and was in charge of the London Philharmonic throughout the 1970s with 15 years in the Royal Opera House. Today, he fulfills a role he described as "caretaker" in Chicago.

When the president of the CSO offered to make him music director, Haitink declined it and told the president the orchestra needed someone younger.

"I will never be a music director anywhere and never wanted to be one in America, because it's a hell of a job. Chicago got me on my terms. I only wanted to be a caretaker. I'm at my best when I don't have responsibility, but can add something out of my own free will," he said.

Haitink said as a senior conductor, his responsibility is to pass on the ideas and knowledge to young conductors. He thought the conductors who jealously guard their position are short-sighted. "Nature always takes its course; when one gets older, one has a bit more equilibrium and one sees more that one should try to help younger people find their way," he said.

But it is difficult in conducting. "The danger is that if there is a talent and he is successful, then he is immediately the darling of the media and things go too fast. There are examples of very talented conductors who go the wrong way because they've confused loudness with success."

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Beijing Concert
Where: Concert Hall, National Centre for the Performing Arts,
When: Mahler's Symphony No.6 in A minor "Tragic" on February 13, 7:30 pm; Haydn's Symphony No.101 in D major, "The Clock" and Bruckner's Symphony No.7 on February 14, 7:30 pm
Admission: 1,380 yuan for VIP, 1,080, 780, 480 and 280 yuan
Tel: 6655 0000