Sample any of this programme half attentively and the 'impurities' of tone and pitching are obvious; but if you make the effort to hear through them you will be rewarded with some of the most concentrated, authoritative and inflammatory Wagner on disc. Start with the Tristan Prelude and you will be struck by the steep crescendos and diminuendos, woodwind tone turning acid, a cougher going through hell trying to hold back in the bars of silence, the lethal slice of the first sforzando, in fact, by the ruthless exposure of just about everything happening in Leningrad's Large Hall from the dry, close, steely brilliance of the recorded sound—in 'simulated', not genuine stereo—deficient only in warmth, and weight of tone for fortissimos. But by the end of the Prelude, you won't doubt the intensity of the experience, or fail to have noticed the aching, arching sweep of the phrasing, and you'll probably conclude that most of the modern recordings in your collection are a half-hearted approximation of the score.
Heart, though, can be conspicuously absent, as in the driven outer sections of this Lohengrin Act 3 Prelude; little more than a circus stunt. You'll need your seat-belt too for the Ride of the Valkyries, and at this speed perhaps it is not surprising to find the brass ''scamping the short note'' (Ernest Newman) of the Valkyrie motif. It is surprising, though, to find the string intonation so poor at the start of the Lohengrin Act 1 Prelude, less so that of the woodwinds when they enter, and it hardly needs pointing out that most western ears will find the climactic delivery of the Grail motif by the ululating Leningrad brass an unholy cacophony. More euphonious, though undeniably imperious, is the Meistersinger Prelude; yes, the latter's 'King David' fanfare theme (1'35'') is curt, almost brutal (the unflattering acoustic is the real culprit), but there is plenty of contrasting tenderness and sweeping ardour, not to mention superbly firm, focused tone, and clarity of line.
Mravinsky's other Wagner recordings of the same repertoire (mostly in genuine stereo) are either distributed around Olympia's five-disc ''Mravinsky Legacy'' (8/88, available separately) or collected on a single disc from Erato's 11-disc ''The Art of Mravinsky'' (6/92). Interpretatively, there is little to choose between them, but this Russian Disc offers a more generous programme than the Erato and includes a Forest Murmurs not otherwise available, and notable for some spirited woodland woodwinds, a plague-stricken audience and a Siegfried as startled and overwhelmed by the Woodbird's news as are we by the orchestra's articulation of his reaction, and Mravinsky's timing and shading of it—the wealth of different emotions suggested by this short, agitated passage is the mark of a master Wagnerian.'