The discography of this work is now extensive yet each new version adds to our knowledge and presents different aspects of this multi-faceted masterpiece. This one, available in only a limited way in its LP incarnation, is among the most lyrical and dramatic I have ever heard, similar to, yet paradoxically different from, the Boulez and Krauss, which it resembles in swiftness: I have not totted up timings precisely but the three are within minutes of each other and all are a deal faster than the 'central' versions of Knappertsbusch, Karajan and Barenboim. What Kegel, a much underrated conductor in what was then East Germany, is intent on showing us is the work's raw drama. I have seldom heard so prominent brass and wind, such an emphasis on telling a story, on trying to interpret what the text means in terms of character. If that comes at the expense of the opera's spiritual message, so be it: it may, extra-musically, have something to do with performing the piece in 1975 in Communist Leipzig, in the new, brutalist Kongresshalle.
The choruses at the end of Act 1, at Kegel's speed, suggest a kind of hearty community singing, not wholly inappropriate; the Flower Maidens very precisely conjure up physical, erotic excitement. At the same time Kegel brings out as much as anyone, except perhaps Krauss, the lyrical, almost bel canto quality of much of the writing, as in the sensuous music just before Kundry's ''Geliebte Held!'' in Act 2. Though climaxes are never shirked, quite the opposite, this is very often a texturally clear and bright performance, something enhanced by the superb recording, spacious, open, yet very immediate, as exemplary as any of the studio recordings and as arresting as any made at Bayreuth itself. Add to that a chorus and orchestra as technically skilled and evidently dedicated as any in the opera's long discography and you have a formidable achievement even before one comes to consider the cast.
Kegel's singers seem to suit his reading. Cold is a more lightweight Gurnemanz than is customary, at first disconcertingly so. Some may find him penny-plain, even mundane in a role once taken by Weber (Knappertsbusch/Teldec) or Hotter (Knappertsbusch/Philips) or Moll (Karajan), but one comes to appreciate Cold's unaffected, sincere way with the music and the text, and admire his line and his lean, steady tone in key passages such as the blessing, ''Gesegnet sei'' in Act 3 (start of the fourth disc, track 5), and he is never less than articulate and cogent. Kollo's Parsifal, sung also for Solti, a couple of years earlier, is here—in live performance—even more committed, and he is in superb voice; indeed I have never heard him to better advantage, his reading full of histrionic power yet never at the expense of fresh tone and even line: listen in Act 3 to ''O wehe des hochsten Schmerzentags!''—the accents are truly heart-stopping—and he manages the lyrical, serene finale with a voice as bright as at the start of the performance.
Gisela Schroter's Kundry is arresting in another way. Never have I heard the role, except on old records of Frida Leider, sung so beautifully. Indeed hers is an 'old-fashioned' kind of vocalization: quick vibrato, judicious use of portamento, sure legato—listen to ''Ich sah das Kind'' to hear them all in practice—and Schroter also rises to the dramatic demands of the end of Act 2. Only her words could be clearer: unusually for a German singer she swallows her consonants. She could have learnt a lot in that respect from listening to Theo Adam. As Amfortas, he gives one of those blinding performances of which he was sometimes capable. He simply is the suffering ruler, eloquently and overwhelmingly so in his Act 3 outburst—great singing-acting. A splendidly biting Klingsor and a more-than-adequate Titurel complete the main cast.
The job of any new interpretation is to convince the listener that, for the moment, this is the only way to give the work. Kegel certainly does that. While I would not place his version ahead of either of Knappertsbusch's readings, or Barenboim's, it offers something quite other than any of those and therefore has its own justification. I do wish Koch could have seen the sense of issuing it at mid-price (it is after all 18 years old); then it would have been even more competitive than is already the case.'