Shostakovich: Symphony No.11 In G Minor, Op. 103 – "The Year 1905"

Written upon the occasion of the Soviet Union's fortieth anniversary, the Eleventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich ''officially'' commemorated the peasant protests of 1905--and the bloody massacre with which Tsar Nicholas responded. The music itself, however, suggests Shostakovich had a more daring ''program'' in mind: the Soviet Union's ruthless military suppression of the Hungarian uprising the year before. It is arguably Shostakovich's most explicit, emotional and daring indictment of the Soviet state and the totalitarian nightmare it had become--a tour-de-force for virtuoso orchestra showing the influences of Modest Mussorgsky and Gustav Mahler, built on melodic material from Russian and Bolshevik revolutionary songs. Semyon Bychkov, who has achieved a reputation as a master interpreter of Shostakovich through his Avie recordings of the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, leads the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln in an overpowering performance, captured in demonstration-quality, state of the art surround sound.