Mariinsky Chorus and Orchestra/Valery Gergiev Mariinsky SACD MAR 0507****

Shostakovich’s Second and Eleventh Symphonies are what you might call explicitly Soviet works. They both celebrate revolutions, the October Revolution of 1917 in the case of the Second (where the 21-year-old composer set the line “Oh, Lenin! You forged freedom through suffering” in the concluding choral section) and the 1905 Revolution in the case of the Eleventh (which won Shostakovich a Lenin Prize in 1958). In the 1920s, Shostakovich was still flexing his musical muscles as a young and radical modernist. In the 1950s, even after the death of Stalin, he was prepared to make grand, pictorial statements that would meet with official approval. Gergiev and his Mariinsky forces are punctilious in their handling of these highly contrasted works. To Western ears, it’s the experimental ardour of the Second that sounds freshest. See url.ie/8jpy