Shostakovich: Symphonies 1 & 15

CLASSICAL: Mariinsky Orchestra/Valery Gergiev Mariinsky SACD MAR 0502 *****

This enterprising coupling on the new Mariinsky label brings together the 19-year-old Shostakovich's First Symphony (which won praise from Berg, Milhaud and Toscanini, among others) and his strangely surreal and valedictory Fifteenth, written in 1971, four years before his death. The assurance of the First sounds even more remarkable than usual in the hands of Valery Gergiev. And he somehow manages to have his cake and eat it in the Fifteenth: the centre holds in spite of the weird instabilities represented by the lights and shadows from the past (including Rossini's William TellOverture, the Annunciation of Death from Wagner's Walküre), and 12-tone themes. Chatter, bustle, grief and pain all persuasively find their place in the scheme of things. www.mariinskylabel.com