Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth reopened in 1951 with a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony led by Wilhelm Furtwängler followed the next day by a performance of Wagner's Parsifal led by Hans Knappertsbusch. Over the next 15 years, Knappertsbusch led the same work 55 times at Bayreuth, and this four-disc set from Orfeo documents the conductor's last performance of the work there from August 13, 1964.By any measure, it is an overwhelming achievement. With his pedigree reaching back to the earliest years of the ...
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Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth reopened in 1951 with a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony led by Wilhelm Furtwängler followed the next day by a performance of Wagner's Parsifal led by Hans Knappertsbusch. Over the next 15 years, Knappertsbusch led the same work 55 times at Bayreuth, and this four-disc set from Orfeo documents the conductor's last performance of the work there from August 13, 1964.By any measure, it is an overwhelming achievement. With his pedigree reaching back to the earliest years of the festival, Knappertsbusch was widely regarded as the true heir to the Wagnerian tradition of Parsifal conducting, and his interpretation here could rightly be regarded not only as authentic but perhaps also as definitive. Though tremendously slow -- Act I takes nearly 100 minutes and the whole opera takes a bit more than four hours -- the breadth of detail, the depth of insight, and the height of inspiration in Knappertsbusch's interpretation remains unsurpassed more than 40 years later at...
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