Symphony No 8

Capriccio Hybrid SACDs are playable on all compact disc players.

"[Kitayenko] realises the urgency of the musical message between painful outcry, dark brooding and mournful elegy in an exemplary fashion, making use of all the extremes he and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne playing in top form are capable of (...). I know of hardly an interpretation of the slow fourth movement which is marked by such a breathless tension from first to last bar. - Overall Placing: excellent [highest mark]"
Thomas Schulz, Applaus 5/04

This recording was made in 2003 at a much acclaimed concert in the Cologne Philharmonie. Dmitri Kitajenko is considered to be the leading Russian conductor of our time. He feels vocation, as scarcely anyone before him, to set new standards with his interpretations of the symphonic works of Shostakovitch in all their facets. In the Gürzenish Orchestra of Cologne , he has available to him a leading European orchestra, which has already been heard on Capriccio with recordings under James Conlon. The breathtaking sonic perspectives and spatial plasticity of the multi channel recording allow Shostakovitch's orchestral langauge to be fully realized for the first time.