Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos 3 & 10 / Gergiev

Valery Gergiev, Mariinsky Orchestra

Shostakovich
Symphonies Nos 3 & 10

Gramophone Editor's Choice - July 2011
For the the third title in his Shostakovich symphony cycle, Valery Gergiev again couples two works from different stages in the composer's career. Although Shostakovich's symphonies are usually highly programmatic, the Third and Tenth Symphonies and among his most enigmatic works.
The Symphony No 3 was first performed in January 1930, its final movement setting a text by Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov praising May Day and the revolution. Shostakovich stated that the work "expresses the spirit of peaceful reconstruction" and yet much of the music is dark and sombre in tone. The Tenth Symphony is one of his most popular and frequently heard works. It was first performed December 1953 following the death earlier that year of Stalin, although Shostakovich had been working on much of the material incorporated in the symphony for many years. The great Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya claimed that the symphony as "a composer's testament of misery, forever damning a tyrant."

Price: $23.98