Wagner: Parsifal

In 1997, at the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg, Valery Gergiev conducted the first ever public staging of Parsifal in Russia. It was a hugely significant achievement – the cast was made up entirely of the company's own singers. But this recording, made 12 years later in the Mariinsky concert hall, features non-Russian singers in the principal roles. Gergiev presumably wanted to record a Parsifal that measured up to the international competition, rather than just a memento of the Mariinsky's progress, and he's certainly succeeded. The great strengths of his performances in the theatre here underpin at least one remarkable performance: René Pape's outstanding Gurnemanz. Gary Lehman's Parsifal is competent, while Violeta Urmana's Kundry mixes thrilling moments with unstable ones. Gergiev's conducting is more than sufficient compensation for those minor shortcomings, though.