Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8

Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed in November of that year by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated. Many scholars have ranked it among the composer's finest scores. Some also say Shostakovich intended the work as a ''tragedy to triumph'' symphony, in the tradition of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. This release in Praga's Reminiscences series of audiophile SACD remasterings features an historic live recording from 1961 featuring Mravinsky leading the Leningrad Philharmonic.

Composed against a cataclysmic backdrop of Stalinist oppression and the Second World War, Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 is a deeply affecting poem of suffering. The composer described it as, ''an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war,'' and it contains some of the most terrifying music he ever wrote. Here, Gianandrea Noseda conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with intensity and understanding, allowing the music to tell its own story as it travels from darkness into light, yearning more for peace than for victory.

The passage of time hasn't dimmed the powerful impact of this outstanding performance. Haitink projects all the drama and emotional ambiguity without sacrificing symphonic cogency.

Diese beiden Veröffentlichungen sind der Beginn einer exklusiven Herbig-Reihe auf Berlin Classics. Günther Herbig, der seit 2001 das Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken leitet, wird seine Tätigkeit dort in diesem Jahr beenden – ein Anlass mehr, seine besten Aufnahmen und Mitschnitte auf CD zu veröffentlichen.

“It is an amazing psychological drama” – that is how Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, describes Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. The Ninth and Tenth also vividly reflect Shostakovich’s struggle with the Stalinist regime – and his self-assertion. Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings is now releasing the recordings of Symphonies 8–10 as the orchestra’s second major hardcover edition with Kirill Petrenko.

LSO, Rostropovich - Shostakovich - Symphony No. 8 (2017) {B&W Society of Sound no. 80 Digital Download 16-44.1}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (bowers-wilkins.com) -> 259 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 161 Mb
Full Artwork (jpg+pdf) -> 5 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2017 LSO / B&W Society of Sound | LSO85 / SoS no. 80
Classical / Early 20th Century / Symphony

Shostakovich wrote his Eighth Symphony (from a total of fifteen) in the summer of 1943, across a period of around ten weeks. It was given its first performance on 4 November that year by the USSR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Evgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated. Expectations were high, for Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, associated with the siege of Leningrad, had been adopted both in Russia and the West as a symbol of resistance to the Nazis. It was hoped that the Eighth would follow in its patriotic footsteps – earlier that year the German Sixth army had been annihilated at Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad has been lifted, and the Nazis were in retreat.

… you get here is perhaps the best of all worlds: a major symphonic work idiomatically played by a first-rate virtuoso orchestra under the hands of a conductor whose contact with the work looks back to the symphony's very creation, captured in vivid, realistic sound none of the russian maestros mentioned above could ever aspire to.