Noseda Shostakovich

"Certain moments in history gave composers the possibility of saying something deeply personal", says LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda. "And Shostakovich speaks equally to us today." As Noseda and the LSO continue their journey through Shostakovich's symphonies, which span the composer's lifetime, they take on one of his biggest creations, the Seventh. Written during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, it is shattering in scale and impact. For Noseda, "you can hear the march of the soldiers, the obsessive repetition, a loop you cannot escape," in the relentless, pounding rhythms, the struggle towards a fragile victory.

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.

Dmitry Shostakovich's two concertos for cello and orchestra, both written for Mstislav Rostropovich (whose recordings remain standards), come from 1959 and 1966. Although the first one is a more rhythmic, outgoing work, both are cut from the same cloth, with intensely inward passages alternating with material in Shostakovich's light Russian-folk mold. In the more serious stretches the cellist often stands exposed and alone, required to carry quite despairing material over long arcs. Italian cellist Enrico Dindo, not a well-known name but one that you're likely to be hearing again, is exceptionally good here. For the high point of it all, hear the final movement of the Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126, which is somewhere between Beethovenian and Tchaikovskian in its affect although not in its language.

The Suite on Words of Michelangelo (1974) is one of Shostakovich’s most moving late works, its spare orchestration perfectly adjusted to the mood of the texts. Preoccupation with death also haunts the Six Romances, setting of English poets composed in 1942 but not orchestrated with 1971 and characteristic of his bitter humour. Both cycles are superbly sung by the Russian-born bass Ildar Abdrazakov.

Shostakovich rails against Soviet oppression throughout the Fifth Symphony—his most thrilling, stark, and uncompromising of all. Gianandrea Noseda teases out every last extraordinary detail, the London Symphony Orchestra navigating the first movement’s quick-changing moods with startling precision and brass playing of astonishing dexterity, from the angry opening strings to its manic march and weeping violin solo. The grim, brooding Largo is performed with breathtaking clarity and textural richness, while the final minutes of the epic, bombastic finale have rarely been played with such excoriating, visceral energy.