Shostakovich: Symphony No. 2 "To October"; Symphony No. 5

Description

The contrasting symphonic work of Shostakovich: a complete success for the BBC Philharmonic & John Storgårds!Commissioned in 1927 for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 2, premiered in Leningrad, is a brief, continuous work of about twenty minutes, structured in four sections. It opens with a Largo evoking primordial chaos and ends with a chorus on the poem To October by Alexander Bezymensky, exalting Lenin and the Revolution. Very different from the First Symphony, this work adopts a modernist and avant-garde language, which explains its rarity in concert. Conversely, the Symphony No. 5 was an immediate triumph at its premiere and remains today one of the composer's most famous and most performed works.