This Parsifal-endeavour
(op. 60 a/b) combines passionate commitment to Wagner's
opus ultimum with an equally ardent delight in the French attitude
to its overweening sublime which lovingly pulls its leg. Fauré and Messager had
collaborated on Souvenirs de Bayreuth for
piano duet on themes from The Ring: Chabrier had
written his Souvenirs
de Munich for the same domestic medium, in
quadrille form, on themes from
Tristan: why not a Parsifal?
When first attempted, I didn't have the skill. By the
mid-1980s, however, technique was up to desire. The original
4-handed piano version tells the complete plot in waltz form
(valses from the Flowermaidens; Sarabande for the Perfect
Fool Hero's Good Friday Coronation). The later orchestration
(premièred by that solely serious Wagnerian Bernard
Haitink to
his manifest puzzlement) had to omit several sequences from the
total scenario, but penetrates deeper, via the orchestra, into
the Franco-Teutonic entente — con amore yet always shot through
with blasphemous laughter.