Further Reading
20th September 2010
Taken from live performances in St Petersburg last June, Gergiev’s vividly theatrical reading of Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestspiel stars Gary Lehman as the titular ‘holy fool’, Violeta Urmana as Kundry, and René Pape as Gurnemanz.
DSD Recording, Mariinsky Concert Hall, St Petersburg, 5–13 June 2009.
The Mariinsky label’s first recording of an opera by Wagner features an exceptional international cast led by René Pape, Gary Lehman and Violeta Urmana.
The Mariinsky Theatre has a long association with Wagner’s music. The composer himself conducted at the Theatre, which in 1863 was the location of the first performance of music from his as yet unstaged Ring Cycle. Over the past decade Valery Gergiev has become a frequent conductor of Wagner’s operas, establishing a formidable reputation in the repertoire, although remarkably this is his first recording of the composer’s operas.
Wagner described his final complete opera as a ‘A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage’ and the work has always sparked controversy, mixing moral and religious themes with music of irresistible sumptuousness. The opera was inspired by Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Arthurian poem Parzifal. Yet despite the story’s overt Christian imagery, Wagner also draws on ideas from other beliefs including Buddhism. The ‘harmonic experiments’ that he adopted for his previous opera Tristan und Isolde are further refined to create music of astonishing beauty that still retains and reflects the deep morality of the tale.
Recording took place between 5 and 13 June 2009 at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St Petersburg, incorporating live concert performances. It was recorded in high resolution multi-channel DSD by award-winning producer James Mallinson and engineered by John Newton and Dirk Sobotka. Parsifal will be the fourth opera on the Mariinsky label. Previous releases have included Shostakovich’s The Nose, Shchedrin’s The Enchanted Wanderer and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, which have collected numerous international awards. The Nose, the label’s debut release, also received two Grammy Award nominations.
Sung in German, Notes in Russian (cyrillic), English, French and German.
Libretto in German with Russian (cyrillic), English & French translations.
“Above all, this is Gergiev's Parsifal and it is the superlatively good playing of the Mariinsky Orchestra that, with René Pape's gloriously sung Gurnemanz, makes this new set essential listening for Wagnerians” Hugh Canning , IRR September