Bernard Haitink

About

Bernard Johan Herman Haitink (born March 4, 1929) is a Dutch conductor.

Haitink was born in Amsterdam and studied music at the conservatoire there. He played the violin in orchestras before taking courses in conducting under Ferdinand Leitner in 1954 and 1955. He became Second Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Union Orchestra in 1955. He was principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1967 to 1979, and of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, of which he is now Honorary Conductor, from 1961 to 1988 (jointly with Eugen Jochum until 1964), music director at Glyndebourne from 1978 to 1988 and at the Royal Opera House from 1987 to 1998. From 2002 to 2004 he was chief conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle. In April 2006, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced that Haitink would be the CSO's new Principal Conductor beginning with the start of the 2006-2007 season in September 2006. Haitink is an Honorary Member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and has been Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1995, a title that was changed to Conductor Emeritus in 2004.

As a guest conductor, the orchestras with which Haitink has appeared the most frequently in the recent past are the Orchestre National de France and London Symphony Orchestra, in addition to his long associations with the Vienna Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestras.

In 1977 he was awarded an honorary knighthood in the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

Haitink has conducted a wide variety of repertoire, with the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich notable among his recordings.

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Wikipedia contributors. Bernard Haitink. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. July 8, 2006, 20:29 UTC. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bernard_Haitink&oldid=62770525. Accessed July 9, 2006.

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