Shostakovich: Symphonies, Vol. 6 - Symphonies Nos 6 & 12

MARBECKS STAFF PICKS 2012

"The deftness of the RLPO is admirable and the performance certainly rounds off in great style what is a very fine reading of the entire work...Petrenko and the RLPO and their commitment never wavers; nor does the excellence of the playing falter."
(MusicWeb Oct 2011)

"Superlative standards already set by this team's Shostakovich couldn't afford to slip in a symphony as great as the Sixth. In the first movement, at least, Vasily Petrenko and the Liverpudlians reach new heights of articulation and sonic beauty...In the inferior Symphony No. 12, Petrenko applies his usual standards of well-differentiated articulation and soulful playing"
(BBC Music Five Stars)

Shostakovich's Sixth and Twelfth Symphonies both had their origins in large-scale projects about Lenin, though the Sixth was eventually to emerge as one of the composer's most abstract and idiosyncratic symphonies. The long, intensely lyrical and meditative slow movement that opens the work is one of the composer's most striking. The Twelfth, one of the least played of Shostakovich's symphonies in the West, became less a celebration of Lenin's legacy than a chronological depiction of events during the Bolshevik Revolution. 'The playing is fabulously crisp and committed, while the interpretations combine atmosphere and a sense of proportion - to the benefit of the youthful First, which receives an eerily effective performance, free of exaggeration.' (Financial Times on Naxos 8572396 / Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3)