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Shostakovich - Symphonies No. 9 and No. 12

£12.69

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Label: BIS

Cat No: BISSACD1563

Barcode: 7318599915630

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 28th August 2007

Works

Shostakovich, Dmitri

Symphony no.9 in E flat major, op.70
Symphony no.12 in D minor, op.112 'The Year 1917'

Artists

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor

Mark Wigglesworth

Works

Shostakovich, Dmitri

Symphony no.9 in E flat major, op.70
Symphony no.12 in D minor, op.112 'The Year 1917'

Artists

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor

Mark Wigglesworth

About

Mark Wigglesworth, described in BBC Music Magazine as “the finest Shostakovich interpreter of his generation”, has already recorded seven of the composer's fifteen symphonies for BIS, beginning this great project with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and continuing with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. The team now returns with their renditions of Symphonies Nos. 9 and 12.

As Mark Wigglesworth observes in his own liner notes, these two works posed serious problems for their creator. The Ninth Symphony was generally expected to be a celebration of Stalin and the imminent victory over the Nazis. Shostakovich wanted to avoid any such programmatic interpretations and therefore came up with what Wigglesworth describes as “a pure and perfect, almost neoclassical work”.

16 years later, Shostakovich was commissioned to write a work commemorating Lenin and the 1917 Revolution. Again reluctant to comply with the expectations of the Soviet state, he now took exactly the opposite approach and wrote his most programmatic symphony, using his well-honed film music technique to conjure up brilliantly the atmospheres and events of the revolution, thereby avoiding having to make any personal comments on it or its leaders.