The music was transferred from the original tapes without any digital processing, and pressed straight onto 180-gram vinyl. The vinyl sets, consisting of between two and five LPs per recording, are exact replicas of the original Eterna releases right down to the artwork. All of the up-to-date information is contained in a detachable outer sleeve, and a separate enclosure inside the inner sleeve featuring the history of the Eterna label plus all relevant information on the purely analogue audio transfer technique. Furthermore, each outer sleeve of these limited editions is hand-numbered. One thing is sure: these recordings never sounded better, or so much like the originals!
This concert recording represents a real stroke of luck, for which we can thank Herbert Kagel, a conductor who championed music during the GDR era that was not viewed as politically correct. This 1975 recording of Parsifal, featuring snappy tempos and devoid of the usual mystique surrounding Wagner, is an interpretation that seems to have evolved well ahead of its time.
