Richard Wagner
PARSIFAL
Sacred Drama to Consecrate the Bayreuth Stage WWV 111
Concert performance on historic instruments from 1882
MATTHIAS GOERNE Amfortas
VICTOR VON HALEM Titurel
KWANGCHUL YOUN / FRANK VAN HOVE Gurnemanz
SIMON O’NEILL Parsifal
JOHANNES MARTIN KRÄNZLE Klingsor
ANGELA DENOKE Kundry
BALTHASAR NEUMANN CHOR & SOLOISTS
KNABENCHOR DER CHORAKADEMIE AM KONZERTHAUS DORTMUND /
CHILDREN’S CHORUS FROM THE TEATRO REAL MADRID
BALTHASAR NEUMANN ENSEMBLE
THOMAS HENGELBROCK
Thomas Hengelbrock as researcher and pioneer
With Parsifal, the last of his music dramas, Richard Wagner created a music drama that places extreme demands on its singers and orchestral musicians. In 2013 Thomas Hengelbrock and his two Balthasar Neumann ensembles gave a concert performance of the work designed to come as close as possible to the sounds that would have been heard when the work was performed for the first time in Bayreuth on 26 July 1882. The players used original instruments from Wagner’s time and replicas of such instruments. Together these formed the basis and vehicle for an interpretation that took as its starting point a detailed examination of the conditions that obtained in 1882 as well as the work’s performing history during the first twenty years of its existence. In preparing his interpretation, Thomas Hengelbrock sifted through countless sources, including old performing material, and also took account of the latest musicological findings in order to come as close as possible to the original. It was a ground-breaking experiment and a genuine pioneering feat.
In addition to the Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble, the cast was made up of six world-class soloists: Angela Denoke as Kundry, Simon O’Neill as Parsifal, Victor van Halem as Titurel and, in the three other baritone or bass roles, Frank van Hove and Kwangchul Youn as Gurnemanz, Matthias Goerne as Amfortas and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Klingsor.
„Parsifal for the first time on instruments from the time of the work’s composition – quite simply a sensation.“ Neue Zürcher Zeitung
„It was indeed a new Parsifal. The colours gleamed, shimmered and shone as if the varnish had just been cleaned away.“ FAZ
„By means of one of Wagner’s most demanding works Hengelbrock has broken radically with a performing tradition that is conventional, calcified and in many respects simply wrong.“ Deutschlandfunk
„A pioneering feat and an against-the-grain start to the Wagner bicentennial: all that the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble achieved under Hengelbrock’s direction was ideally suited to converting Wagnerphobes and enchanting those listeners who suspected that beneath the grime of the last 130 years something different lay hidden, more subtly differentiated colours, more depth and at the same time a greater simplicity in the sense of truth.“ Süddeutsche Zeitung