Bernard Haitink
LaCroix Family Fund Conductor Emeritus, endowed in perpetuity, Boston Symphony Orchestra
About
Born in Amsterdam, Bernard Haitink (March 4, 1929—October 21, 2021) made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in February 1971. Appointed BSO Principal Guest Conductor in 1995 and BSO Conductor Emeritus in 2004, he would become one of the orchestra’s most important conducting figures over the last half century. With the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he recorded the Brahms symphonies and orchestral music of Ravel for Philips, and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Emanuel Ax for Sony Classical. Besides concerts in Boston, he has led the orchestra at Tanglewood (where he appeared for the first time in 1994 and most recently in August 2013, for concerts including that summer’s season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony), Carnegie Hall (most recently in 2014, repeating his two BSO subscription programs of that season), and on a 2001 tour of European summer music festivals. Bernard Haitink’s most recent BSO appearances were for Symphony Hall subscription concerts in May 2018, when he led an all-Brahms program with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, with soloist Emanuel Ax, and Symphony No. 2 in D.
In Memory of Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink, whose remarkable career began in the middle of the last century, was one of the world’s greatest conductors, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra was privileged to have had such a close relationship with him.
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