Parsifal, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, Birmingham

This was a very "concert" performance indeed. Across the stage music stands stood like sentinels lest any rash singer attempted to stand out and – surely not – act. Such fears were misplaced (or the stands did their job) in the end, as the music was what mattered and everyone stood and sang, with one outstanding exception, the Kundry of Mihoko Fujimura.

It can be no coincidence that of all the singers on stage she knew her role most intimately, and had worked for some years with Stefan Herheim in his celebrated production at Bayreuth. That said, Burkhard Fritz (pictured below) has sung the title role in later revivals of the same staging, without apparently gaining a focused image of the part, or requiring himself to project an embodied impression of it. Is Parsifal more than an idiot savant Siegfried? Is he ever prepared to be the kind of saviour that Gurnemanz or Amfortas are looking for? This was not the place for answers. Strictly vocal compensation was limited by a dry upper register and the sense of one singing well within his means until he appeared at the back of the stage to save the day with a resplendent “Nur, eine Waffe taugt”.

Fujimura, too, had the unique ability to fill the hall without great apparent effort: there is a rounded, vatic quality to her dramatic mezzo which suggests that it is coming to the listener at the end of a long tunnel. As Gurnemanz, Georg Zeppenfeld most nearly approached her authority, with a scrupulous use of the text to lift his lengthy narratives, and a gently resonant, bell-like bass that fell easily on the ear. Rutherford’s Amfortas also sounded well in the hall, and comfortable, too much so to leave more than a neutral impression of compromised kingship.

Chemistry with her saviour and master in Act Two was never confined by her imagination

The effort to do more than sing must be considerable under the antiseptic conditions of a well-lit concert hall, but Fujimura made it, seemingly with the prop of her Bayreuth experience foremost in mind, since the Kundry of this first act was no wild woman but a stern governess fully in charge of James Rutherford’s Amfortas while simultaneously in thrall to forces of arrogance and shame she is only beginning to understand, knowing rather than wounded in her retort to the impertinent squires (sung by Alexander Sprague and Edward Harrisson), “Are the beasts here not holy too?” Chemistry with her saviour and master in Act Two was never confined by her imagination but by the limited responses of Fritz, and the stolidly sung, gruffly presented Klingsor of Wolfgang Bankl.

Without yet having led a performance from the pit – that time will surely come, and soon – Andris Nelsons has a clear vision for the piece, at least in the first two acts, and after eight years as Music Director, he has the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra right at the end of his baton: the orchestral response was remarkably prompt, and in a neat accelerando back-out of Act One’s communion scene to the knights’ dispersal, he conducted with progressively smaller beat to bring everyone together with him. He is well prepared to pull around the tempo rather than plod through recitative, which made his conservative, three-in-a-bar restraint for Act Two’s ballet-chanté (Parsifal’s great Massenet-moment) “Komm, holder Knabe” the more puzzling, though the solo Flowermaidens (led by Erica Eloff and Alexandra Steiner) floated with individual, unblended delicacy through Klingsor’s magic garden of suspended animation.

Act Three sagged from Parsifal’s entrance (Fujimura having entirely eschewed the screams and groans which, on paper at least, are so prominent a feature of Kundry’s presence) and slowed further in the Good Friday music to a trudge through the Transformation music, and only picked up from Sunday-oratorio solemnity in the closing minutes. This loss of tension also congealed and clotted the instrumental balance which had kept the previous acts flowing and glowing without the cheap odour of incense or turgid simulacra of "depth" that have commonly afflicted the opera: recessed, sweetly modulated strings, brass kept in check except for moments of maximum impact, attention often focused on wind choirs and soloists, notably the clarinet of Oliver Janes.

The men of the CBSO chorus were honest knights of the grail, always good with the words, which made the final act’s burial march for Titurel (the implausibly youthful Paul Whelan) all the more dramatically incomprehensible when sung not as call and lamenting response between two groups but in one mass. The important off-stage female chorus was as secure in ensemble and pitch as I have ever heard it, and contributed significantly to a poised and flowing first-act communion scene. Relatively abstract moments such as this and the second-act prelude, so vividly conveying not generic evil but Klingsor’s fury of sexual agitation, raised the performance from its context and deservedly won the eventual, inevitable standing ovation. It’s clear that Birmingham will miss Nelsons – “Komm, holder Knabe” indeed.