Wagner: Orchestral Music from Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal

Having spent several paragraphs jeering at Parsifal’s plot, characters and libretto, Monsieur Croche (aka Claude Debussy) was forced to acknowledge that “Parsifal … is incomparable and bewildering, splendid and strong. Parsifal is one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music.” Latter-day Croches will find much to admire in Claudio Abbado’s Wagner album, the centrepiece of which is a mostly wordless “suite” drawn from Act III of Parsifal. In the early days of recorded music, opera-lovers had to make do with individual arias, overtures and what Leopold Stokowski called “symphonic syntheses”. Perhaps in these days of cutbacks in the classical record industry, we will be seeing a revival of this tradition.

The problem with Wagnerian “bleeding chunks” is that Wagner’s thought was essentially symphonic, and his scores do not take well to being cut about. A small but significant example occurs at the end of the Act I Prelude, when Abbado employs the “concert ending”, a conventional resolution into the tonic. Surely the point about the Prelude is that it doesn’t resolve; the resolution doesn’t occur until the end of the opera. Later in the suite there is a cut from the start of Amfortas’s “Ja, Wehe! Wehe! Weh über mich!” monologue and his final confrontation with the Grail Knights to the appearance of Parsifal with the spear. The resolution is too easily achieved.

On the other hand, I’m grateful to have an example of Abbado’s searching, spiritual Wagner on record. Apart from a long-time interest in Lohengrin, resulting in an admirable recording in 1994, Abbado has performed very little Wagner until recently. What a pity that he has waited until so late in his career before exploring a repertoire for which his gifts are particularly suited, especially as he was the music director of an orchestra with a magnificent Wagner heritage for ten years or more! The excerpts from Tristan, lean and nervy in the manner of Carlos Kleiber, are exceptionally fine here. He is giving some performances of Act II of Tristan in Lucerne this summer; I hope that DG will be on hand to record it. The Tannhäuser overture, grandly sounded out by the Berliners, is unlikely to influence potential purchasers one way or the other. Festival-goers will want to have this souvenir of Abbado’s memorable Edinburgh Parsifal, sharp-eared listeners might recognise the amazing Monsalvat bells in the Transformation Music!