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Hans Knappertsbusch is my favourite Wagner conductor and his unique slow tempi enable a myriad of orchestral detail to emerge - and the singers are fully able to make the long phrases with him.
The recording sounds remarkable for its age.
But what of the performance divorced from its visual surroundings? Knappertsbusch clearly saw this as a special occasion. He was even slower with his speeds than in any of his later Bayreuth performances. But he knew the score inside out - Parsifal at Bayreuth became almost his personal fiefdom for the next fifteen years as it had previously been for Karl Muck before the Nazis came to power. The concentration he applies is incredible, working as he loved to in his shirtsleeves in the pit hidden from the audience. Huge paragraphs and whole acts are taken, as it were, in one long breath. The ad hoc orchestra - always at Bayreuth the cream of German players - loved him and it shows in their dedicated and wonderful playing.
The cast is probably one of the best, certainly the most consistent, on disc. Gurnemanz carries so much of the weight of the first and third Acts on his shoulders that his role is crucial: with all his narrations and back-story filling in, he can end up as a garrulous old bore. The part is long, but Wagner by this time understood singers' capabilities well enough to place most of it in the middle of the voice. Ludwig Weber, towards the end of his career, has all the experience, all the deep knowledge of the text and how to bring it to life, all the dedication you could ask. Parsifal, on the other hand, is a more strenuous sing, but a much shorter part. Windgassen, near the beginning of his career, sings it with wonderfully free and youthful tone. George London is a very good, if not a great, Amfortas, fully expfressing the pain and anguish of the man. Modl is simply the best of all Kundrys, blistering in her many Act 2 guises as ensnared witch, enchantress, seductress and vengeful fury. In Act 3, when Kundry is on-stage for practically the whole time but utters just two words - 'dienen, dienen' - those two words alone are searingly moving in her performance. Uhde, great at flawed and troubled Wagnerian characters like the Dutchman, Telramund or Gunther, is a truly scary Klingsor with troubled depths.
All in all, then, probably the best all-round Parsifal unless you demand the latest sound quality and seriously good value in its latest Naxos incarnation.
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