Growing up in Moscow, with a conductor father and a composer grandfather who was a friend and colleague of Shostakovich, Vladimir Jurowski absorbed Shostakovich’s music (and the climate of its composition) into his blood, and his personal connection with it is palpable in these recordings. Both works were recorded live in concert at Southbank Centre. The 2013 performance of Symphony No. 6 was part of Southbank Centre’s festival The Rest Is Noise, a year-long exploration of 20th century music for which the LPO won the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Ensemble.

In Symphony No. 14, a dark song-cycle setting poems by various authors on the subject of death, Jurowski is joined by soloists Tatiana Monogarova (soprano) and Sergei Leiferkus (baritone), regular collaborators with the LPO, who express the haunting sentiment of the songs in their impeccable native Russian. This 2006 performance – Jurowski’s first Shostakovich with the LPO – was described by the Financial Times as ‘a wonderfully felt performance in the way conductor and orchestra articulate and sustain this intimate, death-ridden song cycle. It’s hard to imagine a more intense female soloist than Tatiana Monogarova, while Sergei Leiferkus brings all his authority to the baritone part.’

Review of the Symphony No. 6 performance: ‘An exceptional account of Shostakovich 6 … affecting and scintillating, hugely involving, the playing concentrated, unanimous and full of character. From Stewart McIlwham’s piccolo to the richly mottled double basses via Simon Carrington’s timpani, this was the LPO in fabulous form responding to its Principal Conductor who really knows how this score goes.’ (Classical Source)

Booklet includes Russian texts and English translations for Symphony No. 14.