Magnificent recording of Wagner's ultimate masterpiece
D. R. Schryer | Poquoson, VA United States | 01/08/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"It is fitting that Parsifal was Wagner's last opera because it is his ultimate masterpiece -- and one of the greatest masterpieces in all of opera. The music of Parsifal is both gorgeous and profound, so much so as to almost transport the listener to another world. There are several fine recordings of Parsifal but none finer than this one. Rene Kollo sings beautifully and superbly conveys Parsifal's transition from a naive youth to the full-fledged knight of the Grail. Gottlob Frick, Christa Ludwig, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau are equally superb in their roles and Georg Solti's conducting is magnificent. If you love great music I believe that you will love Parsifal, even if you don't particularly like Wagner's other operas. Parsifal is special, and so is this magnificent recording of it."
Great singing cast
Klingsor Tristan | Suffolk | 08/22/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This is the recording that Alan Bates as the hero of Simon Gray's play 'Otherwise Engaged' kept trying to listen to, but kept getting interrupted before he could get beyond a few bars.
What he would have heard if he'd got to the end would have been perhaps the best sung of all Parsifals. The cast is a starry one (certainly for its time) and they all acquit themselves with more than usual credit.
Top of the list belongs to Gottlob Frick singing this Gurnemanz as his swansong to the recording studio. If you think of him only as the pitch black villains of Walkure and Gotterdammerung or the authoritarian rulers of Lohengrin and Tannhauser, think again. This is a warmly wise mature Knight of the Grail whose every word and musical phrase is deeply considered and sung with meaning and understanding. No garrulous old bore, this. Fischer-Dieskau, too, brings all his experience of lieder singing to bear on the text and the music. This Amfortas is no mere cypher, but an honourable, flawed and deeply anguished man. Christa Ludwig presents all the sharply contrasted facets of this profoundly complex character to her portrayal of Kundry. Maybe she lacks just the last volt of electricity generated by Martha Modl in Act 2. The one slightly weak link in this estimable array is Rene Kollo, a rather bland Parsifal with insufficient distinction between the 'reine Tor' who erupts on the scene in Act 1 and the wiser, older, world-weary black knight who trudges into the final Act. A glance down the cast list reveals strength in depth right down to a list of Flowermaidens that includes Kiri te Kanawa and Lucia Popp.
As for the conducting, Solti is Solti - exciting, precise, a little hard-driven at times and inclined to be episodic. As always, he draws ravishing sounds from the Vienna Philharmonic and his familiar Decca engineers do him proud by the standards of the day.
This is certainly a candidate for a top recommendation Parsifal with its great singing cast and its (relatively) modern sound. Personally, though, I'd go back to the 1951 Knappertsbusch and settle for the more dated sound.
"
The best played and sung PARSIFAL on record
Nemo | 05/07/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I have heard virtually every "Parsifal" on disc and this is the most dramatic, poetic and inspiring of all, bar none. The cast more than lives up to its reputation and the VPO provides glorious playing for maestro Solti, who paces the opera so well that it never drags; indeed,the time passes amazingly quickly. The recording has splendid bloom and richness to it. In an imperfect world, you can't get nearer to perfection than this."
I don't care for it
F. Rupert | 04/11/2010
(2 out of 5 stars)
"I own(ed) this -- sold it on ebay -- and do own Karajan and Knappersbusch '62. I disliked Solti's Parsifal almost from the first bar, forced myself to listen to the whole thing, waited a couple of weeks, and did it again. I just didn't care for it, because I felt the sound and atmosphere were just wrong. The sound is too direct, not spiritual enough, not inward enough, not luminous enough. The Good Friday scene, which has moved me to tears more than once in the other versions, left me cold in this one.
There's nothing objectively wrong with the singers or the orchestra. I think the lack of atmosphere, close miking, directness of the sound (it's not luminous or Bayreuth-ish at all) is all wrong. I love Solti in the Ring, Mahler, and Aida, where his tendency to impatience and dramatizing everything often work well. His Ring is a great favorite of mine. I just think Parsifal was not his cup of tea.
Get Karajan, which is luminous, beautiful, superbly well played by the Berlin Philharmonic, and has Kurt Moll as Gurnemanz. Moll is truly, truly wonderful in this role. I own a lot of opera on record, and there isn't much in the whole pile that tops iKarajan's Parsifal."
WONDERFUL!!! Solti in this work is already relaxing the way
Alexander Z. Damyanovich | Flesherton, Ontario, Canada | 10/02/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"If others have already spoken of this recording as the best-sung on the market but think of Solti as lacking the ultimate iota of spirituality, let me raise a dissenting voice over the latter point.
It's most obvious that this is an outstanding achievement on the part of ALL the performers as well as the recording-engineers. [The only singer I'm not truly totally satisfied with is Zoltan Kélémen as Klingsor, who seems at times to be anticipating some of Schönberg's "Sprechstimme". Kollo actually strikes this writer as an ideal embodiment of the uneducated yet puzzled savage who is slowly turned into a really compassionate, Christian man by life's experiences as well as what Gurnemanz and - paradoxically - Kundry bestow upon him, as proven in Act III when he at long last finally makes his way back to Monsalvat and remembers both of them so well!] To boot, there's no question that Solti is already relaxing in this work the way he later manifests in his (outstanding) recording of the Brahms Symphonies. It's not as driven as the earlier recordings of Tristan (quite underrated in many ways, though it's a pity he didn't get another chance to prove what he in the last 25 years of his life could do with it the way he did with the Brahms!), the Ring and Strauß's Elektra; however, the broadness of vision (already noticeable from the very opening notes of the "Communion/Eucharist" motif starting the opera) is lovely to behold.
[At this point, much as the singers have been properly judged by others, just let me please single out for particular praise Gottlob Frick's portrayal of Gurnemanz (who really becomes a flesh-&-blood 3-dimensional man here!) - what a contrast of a character vs. his equally-magisterial depiction of the black villain Hagen in Solti's "Götterdämmerung". Also oustanding is Fischer-Dieskau's convincing singing of the desperate Amfortas as well as Christa Ludwig's moving Kundry - on top of Hans Hotter's suitably-sepulchral Titurel. Finally, but most importantly, the Wiener Philharmoniker is simply superb (as always under Solti - his precision counters any temptation on their side towards sloppiness)!!!]
Of course, this music is not meant or written to be driven all that much, given its visionariness both spiritually and musically! With the spiritual component (notably the choral writing in addition to the sympathetic treatment of the subject matter - interesting given Wagner's appallingly dreadful character and supposed non-relgiousness...), one realises that in this work the composer is contributing not only to opera but also oratorio (Kundry's temptations of Parsifal combined with her suffering not only notwithstanding but actually heightening matters!). Musically, one sees both the seeds of Debussy's opera "Pelléas et Mélisande" as well as Schönberg's journey (together with his disciples Berg and Webern) into atonalism: from "Parsifal" one can already see the path clear to the pre-atonal Schönberg works "Gurrelieder" as well as "Pelléas und Mélisande" (a symphonic poem to end all symphonic poems - it beats all of what Richard Strauß did hands-down!!). Consequently, Solti's being more relaxed is not only VITAL to the success of this recording; it pays off dividends in unveiling Wagner's final thoughts on religion and specifically Christianity (apparently in his last years, he had considerable interaction with a Lutheran pastor which seems to have changed at least a little bit of his thinking) given his death around age 70 which followed less than a year after this work's première. [He had wanted to write one or more Lisztian-style symphonies after this opera, but his departure from this world stopped any such plans from being carried out.]
[Speaking of Wagner's frequently-vile thoughts: thank goodness that at least all the racist, philosophical and other things he and so many others could/can see in this piece hardly need be noticed - in fact, it's not incompatible with a genuinely Christian viewpoint. As to his cruel dealings with the conductor Hermann Levi on the basis of the latter's being a practising Jew: EVIL and inexcusable as they indeed were, at least they were on a religious instead of a racial basis; and when that happens, it's easier to move to eventual abandonment of such prejudices compared to when one can't have his (her) heart moved by the realisation of somebody else being a human being regardless of ethnic or racial origin!!! {At least, it's easier to change one's religion than one's physical constitution...}]
Regardless of what other teams have achieved (and here I'm being mindful of both Karajan and Knappertsbusch {who served as Solti's mentor during the Magyar/Hungarian's days at the Munich Opera} as formidable competitors whom I'll be glad to sample!), this recording of Wagner's final masterpiece most certainly is not 2nd-best recording to anybody else out there! Most emphatically recommended without reservation."
