Parsifal

There is no doubt about it: Wagner’s “Parsifal” is a venture. In this last of his stage dramas, the composer created a work that makes extreme demands on singers and musicians as well.

In the Wagner Year 2013, Thomas Hengelbrock takes this risk – and rai-ses the stakes. Together with his Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, he will perform “Parsifal” in a concert version that seeks the closest possible proximity to the sound of the premiere on 26 July 1882 in Bayreuth. Original instruments from Wagner’s time and repli-cas will be used. They form the basis and tools of an interpretation that is based on an intensive examination of the conditions of the premiere and the performance history of the first 20 years.

Thomas Hengelbrock has sifted through contemporary score material and other sources and incorporates the latest musicological findings on Wagner performance practice in order to be very close to the original again. “In the performance with original instruments and replicas, perhaps a whole new balance will emerge; it will be exciting to discover how both the relationships within the orchestra itself – instruments and voice groups to each other – and the relationships of orchestra to singers and choir possibly change.”

It is no coincidence that Thomas Hengelbrock chose this opera in particular for his exploration of Wagner: “‘Parsifal’ is not only to be considered in the con-text of Richard Wagner’s entire music-dramatic oeuvre, but also in the series of the great passions and oratorios of the 18th and 19th centuries: the St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven’s ‘Missa solemnis’, Liszt’s ‘Holy Elisabeth’ and the great funeral masses of the time. That is also why this work works wonderfully concertante, the music needs no illustration.“