Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko - Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 15 (2012/2015)DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,8 MHz | Time - 66:53 minutes | 1,54 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time - 66:53 minutes | 1,22 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet The seventh entry in Vasily Petrenko's outstanding sequence of Shostakovich symphonies pairs two works that stand at opposing poles of Shostakovic's creative life but present similar interpretive puzzles. The 2nd Symphony, written to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, begins with music as modernistic as anything Shostakovich ever wrote but ends in a bombastic choral setting of Leninist agitprop poetry. The 15th Symphony, the composer's last, swerves from an almost giddy sense of play to death-haunted musings to a bleak serenity; along the way Shostakovich mixes in enigmatic allusions to Rossini and Wagner. In both pieces, esteem for the music sits alongside bafflement at what these pieces mean, and what they say about the composer's elusive inner life.