Mark Elder and the Hallé surpassed any other account of Parsifal that Michael Tanner has heard

The Proms season of Wagner operas — pity they didn’t do them all; Die Meistersinger would have been specially welcome, since no one else is doing it either — concluded appropriately with Parsifal, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. The conducting at all these performances has been remarkably good, but in some respects Elder was the most striking of all. Working with his orchestra, the Hallé, he produced an account of this miraculous score which, for a combination of passion and precision, surpassed any other that I have ever heard. Without for a moment stinting on climaxes, Elder and the Hallé explored and expounded the refinements and economies of Wagner’s subtle masterpiece to a point that would have left Boulez open-mouthed with admiration. That meant that tempi were for the most part broad, but so sure is Elder’s grasp that that made the overall structure of the work all the more apparent.