Shostakovich's 8th Symphony

Dimitri Dimitriyevich Shostakovich was born in 1906, and died in 1975. After his death, I say goodbye to music composed after him, crowning around 300 years of music that outlives all fashions. I can think of nothing composed after Shostakovich that appears again and again on concert or recital programmes, though there is an abundance of "new music" that appears once or twice, then vanishes. I have just been listening to Shostakovich's 8th Symphony, a work with many very noisy episodes and full of the composer's constant paranoia. It is important to get the volume right when listening to a recording; the works ends pianissimo. If the volume is set too low, you won't hear it. If the volume is set higher, the very loud passages will blow you out of your chair.

Shostakovich always speaks to me, unlike Harrison Birtwistle and a host of others.

I listened to the work this morning in a Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall recording, with the BPO conducted by Kirill Petrenko. Wonderfully played, and with a demonstration-class recording (the 8th symphony needs both). I don't know much about Kirill Petrenko who, unlike many others of his ilk, appears to keep a low profile and just gets on conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, with occasional guest appearances elsewhere. But he and the orchestra take to Shostakovich like ducks to water; fortunately, since I have the 9th and 10th symphonies from the same source lined up on the listening ramp, completing my cannon of the three Shostakovich symphonies I most enjoy.