SOUNDBITES

OUR REVIEW FROM APRIL 1981

‘In most respects this is the most perfect, atmospheric Parsifal yet committed to disc or cassette. Admitting the vocal imperfections, few as they are, the set attempts an artistic, or at least technical superiority which it fairly achieves.’ (William Mann)

DEFENCE

‘Karajan is using the orchestra as he used lighting…in his own productions, to focus our attention on the singer and the song’

As well as a Gramophone reviewer, PETER QUANTRILL is editorial manager of White Label Productions

THE EVIDENCE FOR

Very elegant. Do you mind if I remove my wig? A grizzled knight of our own time, Robert Lloyd once remarked that Act 3 of Parsifal can be about anything you like. It can be about ritual expiation, about personal salvation, or about Aids (this was 1991). Those listeners repelled by Karajan’s image or musical philosophy have found it convenient to align their objections with an opera similarly distasteful to many modern sensibilities. If they’re listening to this recording, they’re not listening hard enough. In the narrations of Gurnemanz and the soliloquies of Amfortas, Karajan does not pick over the shameful, ugly aspects of the Grail brotherhood’s downfall: the chromatic knots of Klingsor’s retold self-castration and the king’s own “Höllenpein” are touched in with what some evidently feel is prudish discretion, but he’s using the orchestra as he used lighting – or often the lack of it – in his own productions, to focus our attention on the singer and the song.

I said singer, not character. Listeners who want “A very human epic” – my honourable friend’s “defence” of the opera in the ENO handbook, 25 years ago – should look elsewhere, and not necessarily to the solipsistic ritual of some Bayreuth recordings from hallowed ages past. He has already made a persuasive case for the narcotically enticing qualities of the central Act: never have the Parisian origins of the Flower Maidens’ ballet been more cunningly concealed. In turn, I’ll

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concede Karajan’s old weakness for casting an exciting talent too early: by Easter 1980, Vejzovic had sung Kundry at Bayreuth for two summers but 37 is young for the role: she is indeed a “wildes Weib” and, as with Callas and Varnay, Karajan knew when to stand back and let nature take its sometimes alarming course.

We both hear a lack of inflection, or intimate revelation, in the portrayals of Moll and Van Dam. We surely can also hear them realise Wagner’s goal of “endless melody” to a degree barely realised before or since. Not once does orchestral detail cover their lines, and yet Karajan is practical and faithful to the letter and spirit of the score. The violins are entirely drowned at the climax of the Prelude to Act 2, and so they should be when the brass are playing fff. Another Wagnerite, Michael Tanner, recently remarked that the best recordings of Parsifal are made live at Bayreuth, and Karajan’s is about as far in timbral character from them as may be imagined, but it does recreate the guiding principle of the Bayreuth pit, to allow quiet singing over a full orchestral texture. In such acoustic necromancy, at least, the intriguing idea of Karajan as a musical Klingsor carries some positive justification.

What boots this transparency if it reveals a shrine empty of meaning? What kind of meaning is the counsel for the prosecution looking for? This is a CD recording, not a staged production. It doesn’t have to take a standpoint on the drama, because

it cannot. Hofmann’s “simple man” is, in context, ideally cast. With some hesitation, I’d even propose that, in the corporate sublimation of individual neuroses within an Oberammergau-like chronicle of an old story, deeply absorbed, to be told once more – and, simply, in its glowing beauty – Karajan’s Parsifal comes closest to the ideal of Schopenhauerian or Buddhist renunciation of will that the opera itself may strive towards. In Religion and Art, Wagner advances the view that “through ideal representation of those [religious] symbols art reveals the concealed deep truth within them”. Thoughtful opera directors will always resist “ideal representation” just as listeners continue to prize it. G

Karajan’s Parsifal cast: Parsifal (Peter Hofmann), Amfortas (José Van Dam), Gurnemanz (Kurt Moll), Kundry (Dunja Velzovic); Klingsor (Siegmund Nimsgern), Titurel (Victor von Halem), Knights (Claes H Ahnsjö, Kurt Rydl), Squires (Marjon Lambriks, Anne Gjevang, Heiner Topfner, Georg Tichy), Flower Maidens (Barbara Hendricks, Doris Soffel, Inga Nielsen, Audrey Michael), Voice from Above (Hanna Schwarz); Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. DGF d 413 347-2GH4

YOUR VERDICT

Join the jury in the Forum on the website and cast your vote for or against Karajan’s

Parsifal atwww.gramophone.co.uk

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