A fine live performance of Shostakovich’s wartime masterpiece by the man who premiered it but one whose provenance is something of a mystery. With the Eighth Symphony, it is essential – for conductors, players and listeners alike – to take the long view. Pacing is everything and no one knew that better than Mravinsky, several of whose performances have wafted in and out of the catalogue over the years.

This issue is of a live performance given in March 1982 (it is not clear precisely when) but apparently not, as the inlay says, the performance given on March 27, 1982 which appeared on Philips (6/89) – glowingly reviewed by Michael Oliver and later reissued on Russian Disc (2/97). My copy of the Philips performance (issued again in the “Virtuoso” series in 1998) is almost two minutes swifter and retains the prominent cough in the opening bars. That performance is even tauter and more intense than this newly re-engineered account, remastered by Paul Arden Taylor. The history of Mravinsky’s performances of the work on disc is fraught with misleading attributions and transfers too sharp in pitch, but the difference in duration here signals two distinct performances are involved.

Nonetheless, this is a marvellous reading of the work, epic and catastrophic by turns, the first-movement climaxes awesome, the toccata third movement electrifying, the Largo passacaglia both chilled and chilling. If you’ve never heard a Mravinsky performance of this work, do not hesitate to make its acquaintance.