No Hiding Place: Arnold Whittall enjoys a revealing concert performance of ‘Parsifal’ in Birmingham

Review of Parsifal (concert perf.), conducted Nelsons, Birmingham, 2015.

November 2015, Volume 9, Number 3, 69–71.

Shortly before making his debut at Bayreuth in 2010, with Hans Neuenfels’s new production of Lohengrin, Andris Nelsons conducted a concert performance in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall which left no serious doubts about his credibility, and potential, as a Wagner interpreter. Responses to his Symphony Hall Tristan in March 2012 were more mixed – the performance only really found its feet with the entrance of King Mark in Act II – but the recent issue of his recording of Der fliegende Holländer made at the Concertgebouw in May 2013 has been well received. More recently still, on 17 May 2015, and having already committed to conducting Parsifal at Bayreuth in 2016, Nelsons led a magnificent concert performance of the work in one of his final appearances as music director of the CBSO.