Parsifal-Kristall (excerpt)

Parsifal-Kristall transforms the salvation choir from Wagner’s sacred festival drama by utilizing a new technique for his “art of transition”. The music of the finale, which dissolves all the dramatic tensions and conciliates all the contrasts of Wagner’s music drama, now runs backwards, beginning with the last crescendo and leading into clusters of interleaving layers of the musical material, as if Wagner’s promise of blessedness should again be questioned. Essl stretches the reversed sound segments of Wagner's original once, twice, four times and eight times. Like loops, these musical layers are interwoven into a texture. The composer controls the algorithmic mixture of the material creating individual combinations. In spite of his complex deconstruction, Essl saves the aura of Wagner’s homophonic music. In a process of condensation and equalization, the blurred transitions develop a musical dramaturgy of their own. This soundscape recalls Mahler’s polyphony, which let music of different origins sound together, and it also recalls György Ligeti’s technique of structural blurring in pieces like Lux aeterna. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the Holy Grail is a stone that had fallen from heaven. Essl imagines it as a crystal, and its kaleidoscopic light refractions open ever-changing views on new horizons. Beyond the urge of a formal order of succession, every instant becomes a moment of fulfillment. (Susanne Vill)