This classic version, generally accepted as the most convincing and knowledgeable performance the work has yet received, has been available on Legato for a while, but the reissue here, presumably from the original Melodiya tapes, is greatly preferable. The set wears its 40 years lightly: indeed, the recording of the voices and even the orchestra, albeit in mono, has a great deal to teach producers today in terms of a natural sound. I have rehearsed the reading's virtues before, above all Khaikin's unforced, unexaggerated, wholly integrated direction, with players and singers who know the score from the inside giving an entirely idiomatic reading (if you can forgive the watery horns). From the very first scene you feel the impetus of the performance and are drawn into its truly Russian ambience. Khaikin brings into perfect balance the dramatic and yearning aspects of the score in a lyrical, delicate reading. With his incisive but sympathetic beat, he clearly characterizes those many passages of intimate feeling without which any account of the piece crucially fails.
The young Vishnevskaya is a near-ideal Tatyana having exactly the right voice for the part and totally convincing us that she is Tatyana. She is incomparable. What a genuine, unsophisticated outpouring of passion the Letter scene becomes as she interprets it, and how superbly she sings it! Adyeva makes much of little as Olga. Few tenors before or since Lemeshev have offered precisely the right tone and character for Lensky—except his younger self on the 1936 set, now available on Dante (1/94). From his first entry we hear a plaintive timbre and easy way with the language that proclaim a true poet. Belov's Onegin, though not quite in that class, is a resolute member of a real ensemble and rises to the challenge of the final scenes. Petrov offers Gremin's aria in its most loving form. Verbitskaya is an appreciable nurse steadier than most.
All that disappoints is the presentation: many spelling mistakes (e.g. Pretrov for Petrov), no libretto, and—worst of all—no indication of the historic significance of the performance in the accompanying booklet. Yet I would urge you to acquire this interpretation: an Onegin of national character and great eloquence, before international artists got to it, generalizing and overplaying the emotional content. Thank goodness at Glyndebourne this summer we got closer to this older tradition.'