Schubert's 'Great' symphony, Bartok's late spring

Conductor emeritus Bernard Haitink (left) leads András Schiff and the Boston Symphony Orchestra last night at Symphony Hall. (michael j. lutch)

A Bartok scholar once confessed to me that she could not bring herself to read the composer's correspondence from his late period in America. It was simply too heartbreaking, she said, to witness at close distance the slow expiring of one of the century's great composers, displaced by exile, dismissed by his adoptive public, his health deteriorating, his finances in ruin. Against this backdrop, the creative spring of the composer's very last years is all the more astonishing. Near the end of his life, his fortune shifted, his health and his spirits rallied, and he wrote some explosive, life-affirming music such as the Concerto for Orchestra and the Solo Sonata for violin. He also wrote the remarkable Third Piano Concerto.

The work, which makes up the first half of this week's Boston Symphony Orchestra program, inhabits another universe from Bartok's two earlier piano concertos, and even, in a way, from his other music of the same period. It was written for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory, to perform after his death, which came 17 bars before the end of the work. Its contours are clean, graceful and limpid without a trace of the knotted, percussive qualities that mark much of his earlier piano writing. The middle movement, labeled by the composer as Adagio Religioso, opens with a gently sublime chorale of strings. The music seems to share a secret with the slow movements of Beethoven's late quartets.

Last night in Symphony Hall, the soloist was the fine Hungarian pianist András Schiff, who gave a clear, shapely, and rhythmically incisive account of the concerto. The outer movements conveyed vigor and refinement in equal parts, though the slow movement had its feet planted a bit too firmly on the ground, and one wished for a touch more luminosity in the sound. BSO conductor emeritus Bernard Haitink, back on the podium for a second week, proved a responsive partner.

Haitink was on less solid ground last week, leading his first-ever performances of Bach's "St. Matthew" Passion, but he returned here to the comfort of home, closing the program with a glowing reading of Schubert's "Great" C major Symphony. In Haitink's signature style, this account balanced architecture and emotion, Romantic heat and Old World elegance. You could see it all in his gestures from the podium, his right hand marking a crisp and Apollonian beat, his left hand often quivering and churning, calling for a current of energy to flow beneath the music's clean lines. The BSO players, who have worked regularly with Haitink for years, made it clear they knew what he was looking for.

Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.