Something very striking happens during the orchestral transition to the final scene of the last act. It’s a performance where the overall approach to the monumental score is basically cautious – as if all involved are concerned primarily to get through without mishap, and that offers as many examples of short-term expressive over-emphases as of rhythmic under-articulation – but which suddenly takes wing. There’s a raw intensity and sense of expressive breadth about this portentous processional. And it serves as an ideal basis from which the three stages of the drama’s conclusion – Amfortas’s final lament, Parsifal’s assumption of leadership, and the sublime choral-orchestral epilogue – can make an effect all the more powerful for the degree to which it differs from what has gone before.

This set is, I presume, the result of a single, concert-hall performance, recorded on December 10, 2010. The difference between such a relatively ad hoc affair and a seasoned stage production is obvious throughout; and although, as the accompanying DVD of extracts reveals, the solo singers with their music stands do manage a certain amount of dramatic interaction and response, the rather cramped platform setting is bound to underline the difference from any theatrical staging, however static. Robert Holl, who, as Gurnemanz, carries the main narrative burden of Acts 1 and 3, resorts to rather clipped articulation, as if to underline the importance and nature of the words in an environment where no substantial visual clues to the dramatic action can be provided. Holl has abundant stamina, but musically he is rather put in the shade by singers whose parts give them more opportunity to project Wagner’s well-shaped lines to strongly dramatic effect. Katarina Dalayman, Falk Struckmann and Klaus Florian Vogt do much to transcend the performance’s oratorio-like ambience, though the sound-environment provided by conductor Jaap van Zweden, fluctuating between rather forced intensity and something much less incisive, is far from ideal, at least until that long-awaited gear change in Act 3. And much of the opera to that point seems to unfold at a lower dramatic temperature than usual.

While the 80-minute DVD of 10 extracts usefully provides visual evidence of the location and character of the performance as a whole, it seems distinctly casual as far as the editing goes: in particular, the omission of Act 1’s last few bars is unfortunate. When played on normal domestic equipment, the SACD recording seems to restrict the space round the voices and flatten the acoustic perspective of the larger choral and orchestral episodes. However, the combined forces of the Netherlands Radio Choir and Latvian State Male Choir bring an appropriate weight of tone to a performance that certainly can’t be accused of skating blithely over the great work’s surface. There’s room for a 118-page booklet in the box, but the opera’s text is in German only.