“It is an amazing psychological drama” – that is how Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, describes Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. The Ninth and Tenth also vividly reflect Shostakovich’s struggle with the Stalinist regime – and his self-assertion. Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings is now releasing the recordings of Symphonies 8–10 as the orchestra’s second major hardcover edition with Kirill Petrenko.
Musically, each of the three symphonies is a world of its own – what unites them is the desire for freedom: once whispered behind closed doors, once ironically distorted, once shouted out. Shostakovich’s Eighth presented a tragedy with a forced smile at authority craving for patriotic anthems. In his Ninth Symphony, the composer made a surprising about-face, so that he had to remain silent as a symphonist until after Stalin’s death – in order to survive. Following his death, the Tenth immediately erupted from Shostakovich – after an eightyear creative break. Kirill Petrenko describes the work as the “greatest stroke of liberation in Shostakovich’s artistic output after the Fifth”.
The edition contains recordings that were made during the coronavirus pandemic, on two CDs and one Blu-ray. They are accompanied by a film interview with Kirill Petrenko and insightful texts on Shostakovich’s works. The edition was designed by the artist Thomas Demand. His photographs symbolize the tense atmosphere in which Shostakovich composed his works: outside, the oppressively uniform row of steel lockers, inside, photos of flowers from Moscow’s Gorky Park.