One of Shostakovich’s greatest symphonies, the work sets poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko on the World War II Babi Yar massacre and other topics. The first poem, Babi Yar, implicitly criticises Soviet anti-Semitism. The symphony was completed during a thaw in Soviet censorship, but even so Nikita Khrushchev criticised it before the premiere and threatened to stop its performance. The premiere went ahead, but afterwards Yevtushenko was forced to add a stanza to his poem claiming that Russians and Ukranians died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar. Thereafter the work was infrequently performed until recently.

Shostakovich originally intended the first movement to stand by itself, but ideas kept coming to him and he had to expand the work into its current symphonic form.

Performed by fellow Russians Yuri Temirkanov, bass Sergei Aleksashkin and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, this new Shostakovich recording is an album of fireworks and beauty.