Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Knappertsbusch and Parsifal, January 29, 2007
The world-famous conductor, especially renowned for his staging of Parsifal in Bayreuth. The names of Knappertsbusch and Parsifal are inseparable. The conductor regarded his work as a sacred act, a great homage to God. He spent each night in zealous prayers and he needed to see a soaring dove in the final scene of the triumph of the spirit even over an empty Bayreuth "saucer".
The Knight of the Grail Gurnemanz is played by Ludwig Weber - the name known mostly in the inner circles. This exclusive musician has played a lot at Bayreuth Festspiele, without him a Wagner performance would not be a success. His playing is characterized by incomparable charm and if, sometimes they say about a musician "good but without much kick", in case of Weber it is just the opposite.
Wolfgang Windgassen is a Bayreuth colossus and Wagnerian prime star. "What should have been done if Wolfgang Windgassen was not in Bayreuth?" To which Knappertsbusch retorted: "Send him an invitation as soon as possible, what else?"
Once Knappertsbusch philosophized: "Windgassen for Bayreuth is a sort of astral indisputable body, which by spiritual force is retaining here the Beauty (das Musische)». Knappertsbusch seldom made such remarks, so when he did it was after long deliberation. Windgassen comet started its flight from the role of Parsifal.
There are many recordings of Parsifal from Bayreuth Festspiele with the ever-present Hans Knappertsbusch and Windgassen as Parsifal. Philips recording of Parsifal from Bayreuth in 1962 can be considered universal for a wide range of listeners. But the real connoisseurs know that there will no such Parsifal as at the opening in 1951. No words can describe that atmosphere of incredulously quite audience in which a cough would have been a crime. Listening would be better than words.
|
|
|
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A legendary performance: everything works!, April 27, 2006
This recording was made during the first postwar Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. It features Wolfgang Windgassen (Parsifal) and George London (Amfortas) at the beginning of their careers as Wagner singers. Martha Modl set the standard for Kundry for a generation. Conductor Hans Knappertsbusch was well known in Europe for his Wagner--especially "Parsifal".
In short the cast was wonderful, and the conducting magnificent. The sound is monaural, but made with the best equipment available in 1951. It was made during live performances of the opera in Festspielhaus. Thus it has the level of excitement possible only in live recordings and is aided by the excellent acoustics of the theatre.
Amazon allows five stars. I would give it six or seven.
|
|
|
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Redeemer Redeemed,,,Literally, March 12, 2008
Little to add to the long, thoughtful reviews below, except to say this is in my opinion the single greatest recording of any opera, ever. Wagner's final work is a re-working of the Fisher King myth: how a holy innocent restores fertility to the sickly realm of the Grail Knights, a fallen land in perpetual winter, besieged by a warlock, one of their number gone to the dark side, and his bevvy of flower-tarts/temptresses. Wagner's text is a potent blend of Christian, Buddhist and Pagan myths; his score, spare, voluptuous, and rapt, the helmet-horned histrionics of yore dialled down to an oozing liquid musical synesthesia that SOUNDS JUST LIKE blood flowing from Christs wound, cleansing water, sacramental wine, tears of compassion -- is his very finest, most miraculous achievement.
The reputation of Parsifal is: a)that the proper balance of the meditative, magical, spiritual and erotic is almost impossible to bring off convincingly in performance, and there are far fewer good ones in the Wagner discography than say, The Ring; b)only the acoustics of Wagner's own Bayreuth theater, for which the score was actually written to order, can reproduce the work properly; and c)Between 1951-1964 conductor Hans Knappertsbusch owned this work as no conductor has ever owned a single opera before or since.
This was Knappertsbusch's first Bayreuth Parsifal, and while in broadcast mono, it takes the prize. The reason is the sense of occasion. While Hitler had adopted the Wagner family as his own and showered Bayreuth with his largesse, he also quietly banned Parsifal in 1938. (Remember, for all the talk of Wagner as a proto-Nazi, he intended Parsifal to be his defining work, and willed that it be performed at his theater annually in the spirit of a religious ritual; that the Nazis would suppress something so dear to Wagner's heart indicates that his message of love and compassion was fundamentally at odds with the ideology his name has been tarred by forever). After the war, the theater was shut down by the US occupation while its principals were investigated for their cosiness with Hitler. Finally in 1951, the Wagner grandsons re-opened the rehabilitated, de-Nazified Bayreuth with this very Parsifal. Master record producer John Culshaw recorded it beautifully (I would barely know this was mono); and I believe that this tale of redemption is here so powerfully rendered because everyone involved, including the audience, knew they were witnessing the actual redemption of Wagner, the festival, and a discredited strain of German Romanticsm so hideously co-opted by Hitler. This is the actual sound of cultural re-birth, and if you fall under it's spell, it will knock you to your knees. Knappertsbusch and co. were not merely performing an opera, they were performing a kind of musical sage-burning ceremony to chase away the demons that had corrupted their stage,their race, their nation, and also, in the process, embracing the spirit of atonement, self-abnegation, universal love and forgivness that is Wagner's message. It really is no exaggeration to say that this recording was a rite, an exorcism, a purging of evil. And the committment of the performers elevates Parsifal to a level of emotion beyond a mere night at the opera
Legendarily, Knappertsbusch took slow tempos, yet even by his standards this is slow, in fact this is the longest Parsifal on record. Yet it never turns into a taffy-pull, in fact Wagner's structural underpinnings, the endless melodies morphing from motif to motif, have never been more audible, the climaxes gain from the dammed up tensions of the hushed bits, and the voices are powerfully exposed and naked above the unfurling orchestral carpet. The starry cast -- Windgassen, London, Hotter, especially Modl's unhinged Kundry -- has never been bettered. And as I began, the sense of occasion is palpable. Many prefer Knappertsbusch's 1962 recording on Philips for it's faster tempo and stereo sonics, and it is great. But this is beyond great -- the slightly rusty mono cannot put a brake on what is truly a religious experience, exactly as Wagner intended.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.
DVD ~ Heinz Feldhoff
DVD ~ Siegfried Jerusalem
![Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen [Box Set]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tpPZ7DZYL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
~ Richard Wagner
~ Hans Hotter
- the new music site from IMDb and Amazon.
