Conductor John Storgårds pairs Shostakovich’s radical youthful 2nd symphony with the more assured 5th, in performances that emphasise clarity over drama ...

People compelled – even infatuated – by the music of Dmitri Shostakovich tend to have reached this condition as a result of two experiences, and I am no different. First come the symphonies: on a life ...

Shostakovich wrote his First Cello Concerto for the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. He loved it so much, he learnt the whole piece off-by-heart in four days. Timecodes refer to the ...

Many years ago, a relative of mine used the term "music-intense" in conversation to describe a musician we both knew. I think it's also an apt descriptor for BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson. His ...

WHEN PAAVO JÄRVI CONDUCTED two rarely performed Shostakovich cantatas in Tallinn, Estonia, three years ago, an outcry in the media forced him to hire a bodyguard. This episode highlighted both the ...

For a composer who saw his popularity fluctuate more wildly than the Dow Jones averages while he was alive, Dmitri Shostakovich would have been astounded to find himself in the middle of a major ...

From the exuberance of a fiesta to expressions of profound despair, the Hong Kong Philharmonic hit the mark at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on Good Friday. Returning after last year’s Sibelius and ...

Shostakovich's Waltz No. 2 featuring a trumpet player that keeps respawning. #shostakovich ...

When guns speak, the muses keep silent, says an old Russian proverb. Last winter, as he listened to the roar of German artillery and watched the sputtering of German incendiaries from the roof of ...

Do not look for “chamber symphony” in Shostakovich’s list of compositions. The three “symphonies” on this disc are arrangements of the String Quartets Nos 1, 8 and 10 by conductor Rudolf Barshai, the ...