We think of Richard Wagner as an orchestrator of epic proportions – the six harps and 18 anvils of Das Rheingold, for instance – but he was one of the few great composers to consistently create at the keyboard, and that’s where all his great operas began. 

As a student he wrote a piano transcription of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, so we should not be surprised that the eminent Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky has taken some of his own arrangements into the recording studio. And with stunning results. Forget the soaring horns, shimmering strings and crashing brass and restore your ears to factory settings. These eight tracks of excerpts from five operas are not a reduction, more a resurrection of the glorious music as it came to the composer’s ears and fingers.

Louis Brassin’s sparkling versions of Entry of the Gods into Valhalla from Das Rheingold, with some additions by Lugansky, and Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre, both set the tone splendidly. Lugansky’s own...