I have been listening to this on Good Friday for years. I love the old recordings that I consider heavenly as I like to imagine that these long passed players are now angels creating a similar kind of heavenly music.

"Sehr langsam" (very slow) wrote Wagner on the score, and Toscanini respects this marvellous.

most magnificent music ever!

Just the best....it makes one feel alive

all is possible to speak about toscanini, but in front of parsifal's prelude, so long and unique as interpretation, for me is the toscanini's testament, as for us is to be in front of a great cathedral with gothic prayer before to enter in paradise... carlo lamberti

The BBC Symphony of the 1930s had the finest wind section in the world, and it shows in this recording. Toscanini saw the long arches of music in a score, and the harmonies straining at each other in this work brought out the best in him, and he the best in the orchestra. This is a stunning performance.

Amazing! Wonderful! A treasure. Thanks so much for uploading this. It so great to hear Toscanini with orchestras other then the NBC Symphony. The sound is remarkably good for 1935. Enjoy - it doesn't get better than this ...

Un pur moment de magie : recueillement, sentiments poignants ; grandiose ; pur ; mystique ; beauté ; et tant d'autres sentiments... et ressentis.....Depuis si longtemps......

The textures shimmering

What I like about this recording is that it was done in a concert hall, with decent reverberation. Much of Toscanini's recorded output was done with the NBC Orchestra, at 30 Rock, and in those days recording engineers thought that all music should be recorded in anechoic environments. So there are many great Toscanini recordings done in absolutely dead rooms, much to the music's detriment.

The quality of this 1935 recording is impressive.

I can only say that this F.........AWESOME -JUST TOO INCREDIBLE !!!

Awesome!

just i love parsifal, is the most beautyful work of wagner! i love his work so much!!

Toscanini um dos maiores maestros de todos os tempos. Ele consegue interpretar esta música com uma perfeição fantástica. A ochestra em briga constante com o concerto de tocidas!

The extracts of parsifal by Karl Muck are very good indeed. It is a pitty that we have just a part of the opera.

Parts of Parsifal are surprisingly lyrical - the Good Friday music stands out in this regard. Those dissonances in the last several bars are very reminiscent of the Siegfried Idyll.

wonderful respectful version of that Wagner piece

So many film scores sprouted from this music…

Well, no one's saying that a (certain) conductor is a "god" ... but the legacies of Toscanini and Furtwangler (among others) might even be MORE-secure than they were, shortly after their deaths, in the 1950s. The discipline, extraordinary (baton) techniques and the overall GREATness of those two, with the great PLAYINGS of their Orchestras are, undoubtedly, the most-enduring parts of a legacy that will NOT be surpassed. OK?

Great conduction, great tempo

AWESOME Conducted Wonderfully by Toscanini Astonishing Orchestral Music Thanks for uploading Ahmad Ali Ahmad Heap of thanks "WeicheWotanWeiche" Good Friday 6.04.2018 8:50pm

Increíble. Los "tempi" del supuestamente ultrarápido Toscanini son extraordinarios. Ni que fuera Celibidache. ¡Qué plenitud!. ¡Que musicalidad!. Un Parsifal fuera de serie, aunque la orquesta es manifiestamente mejorable o quizás sea la grabación. Pero, ¡qué música!, ¡qué dirección!.

Bravo.

It is such a pity that this music has fallen out of favor for performance. In my 45 years of playing professionally, we have played it once! One will hear Dutchman, Rienzi, Meistersinger, and the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod but Parsifal? Hardly a performance anymore. This takes a lot of sheer technique on the part of both conductor and orchestra to pull off, never mind thoughtful interpretation.

Toscanini is singing and crying!

Che linea,che tensione armonica!!! Non c'è un buco...peccato un po' l' intonazione dei fiati, ma da quegli anni sono cambiate tante cosa sia a livello tecnico che meccanico stesso degli strumenti.Pensando la data di questa registrazione,ha del.miracoloso l'effetto e la resa.Stupendo!

Somewhat pre-modern brass, and some very odd woodwind intonation. But a valuable document. It had been only four years before that AT conducted the whole thing at Bayreuth. Management was star-struck, even though he set records for slow elapsed time. When he opted out in 1933, Richard Strauss took over and trimmed a half hour off the first act.

The brass are only marginally better than with the NBC, where they blare mercilessly at the expenses of one's ears. But only Toscanini could adopt such a broad the tempo in the first two phrases without dragging (like Muck).

("just a part") - It's a pity, in a way ... but we're very-fortunate to have the Muck recordings of PARTS of Parsifal, esp. the excerpts with Ludwig Hoffman ("Gurnemanz"). The latter are some of the GREAT recordings of Wagner, even though they might seem "old" (from 1927, or thereabouts).

I have heard this recording more than 15 years ago : it is as fantastic as in my memory. Toscanini was really a prodigious conductor, although Furtwängler in 1938 for Parsifal is even better.

tempo is brilliant, quite similar to James Levine´s conduction

At some point this appears to have been remastered in stereo. And acoustically heavily tweaked as well. Late 1930s recordings made in the Queen's Hall and released in the day don't sound much like this. But it probably is Toscanini conducting. Another issue at a slightly different pitch but purporting to be the same performance, claims the orchestra is not the BBCSO at all but the LSO. I have to say that neither sounds much like either of them. But the original MIGHT just have been the BBC orchestra, if we are to believe it really is a London recording ( and the coughs suggest that - but on the other hand the EMI on-the-spot recordings with the equipment in the Hall itself were NOT public performances. Live performances were recorded from land-line links). There are one or two points in the Prelude which sound very like the NBCSO brass at work with pinpoint "sung" chording ensemble the BBCSO of the thirties just didn't use. ButToscanini made no Wagner recordings in London intended for commercial issue, ever, so it can't be ruled out that he might have got this effect in performance with a British orchestra, though it sounds very American - particularly after around 15 minutes of the Prelude where the level is reduced almost exactly in the RCA style to avoid overloading at the climax in a way Gaisberg - who was in charge in London - usually didn't have to do.

aboutr randy ross's comment: toscanini was a vehement anti fascist and anti nazi. he supported mussolini before 1919 when the dictator advocated a socialist platform. when mussolini switched to the extreme right, toscanini broke with mussolini. when furtwangler decided to remain in germany and conduct for hitler, toscanini broke with furtwangler.

VOICI LE SEUL TEMPO DE PARSIFAL

Forgive me but, does anyone know why this sounds a semi-tone lower than what is written!?

This version here differs from recording made with his NBC Orchestra. I guess Toscanini as a guest conductor here did not have enough time to rehears this Wagner music piece with BBC orchestra.

(Toscanini/Furtwangler) - That's right, beyond ANY shadow of a doubt ... but have you ever listened-to a forgotten conductor ... Karl Muck ... in this music?

For the relationship between Toscanini and Furtwängler, it is much more complicated. Toscanini was angry awithFurtwängler because Furtwängler did not go to New York to suceed him in 1936. Furtwängler has never been a nazi and saved many Jews. Anyway that's true that Toscanini has had an examplary political behavior but it has nothing to do with musics.

Que dire?

Following the rigorous moral arguments agst. Furtwangler presented here, I wonder whether it's ethically acceptable to listen to Shostakovich? "He received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947-1962) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (from 1962 until his death)." Hmm. Or Prokoviev. Or the famed Soviet conductor, Kurt Sanderling. How selective moral judgements are in the West!

Cesare - W/all due respect, I don't think that Furtwangler ever wanted to "glorify" Hitler and the Nazis. It's been said that the relationship with Hitler was of a benefit to them, both. In other words, the madman could use Wagnerian music for HIS purposes, and Furtwangler could be allowed to continue as head of a GREAT Orchestra.

Höchste Konzentration und größte Diffusion spiegeln in Inhalt und Form als Tonmalerei Sein und Wesen des Menschen. Das ist das Geheimnis des Werkes Wagners ... aber auch dieser unbeschreiblichen Interpretation Toskaninis (die einem das Herz zerreißt). kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aNlyp7aAqL2oc2w.html

Can't they edit out that coughing now?

"bloody time beater" Furtwangler said..... be, non del tutto!!!!

Blah - blah- blah. All I care about is the music.

Queen's Hall was great. Too bad the Luftwaffe destroyed it.

Furtwangler stayed ijn Germany and conducted for Hitler and allowed himself to be used to glorify the Nazis and Hitler. That decision cost Furtwangler his relationship with Toscanini, who found this decision unacceptable behavior.

Great democrat conductor.May he rest in peace!

I think all of you people need to chill out on thinking some conductor is a god. You know Richard Wagner was one of Hitlers favorite composers and his music was played in Dachau concentration camp to "re-educate" the prisoners. And dont forget toscanini ran for Fascist parliamentary candidate in Milan....