Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Complete Opera recorsded in 1978)

Rosette Recording (Highest Award) Penguin Stereo Guide

1001 Classical recordings you must hear before you die (1901-1950)

'Rostropovich in his finest recording ever. With an impressive cast and Rostropovich's galvanizing commitment so strongly conveyed, this highly-charged reading catches the cumulative sweep of the music in the way a good performance in the theatre should do.'
- Gramophone

Awards: Caecilia Prijs, Belgium; ECHO Deutsche Schallplatten Preis, Germany; Diapason d'Or, France & Gramophone, UK

Shostakovich's youthful opera, 'a work of flair and brilliance and unfailing vitality', enjoyed nearly 200 performances in Leningrad and Moscow after its premiere in 1934. And then, famously, in January 1936 Stalin attended a performance; the work was denounced ('Muddle instead of music') and not seen again until 1963, ten years after Stalin's death, by which time Shostakovich had revised the work as Katerina Ismailova.

This famous recording, made in London in 1978, is the first ever made of the original version of the score. It features the distinguished Russian dramatic soprano Galina Vishneyskaya as Katerina ('a completely convincing performance') and her husband, Mstislav Rostropovich, directing a superb international cast and the London Philharmonic