Straight to No. 1 on the UK charts* on release
Searing, seismic, Shostakovich
Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra • Vasily Petrenko
Completed in 1936 but withdrawn during rehearsal and not performed until 1961, the searing Fourth Symphony finds Shostakovich stretching his musical idiom to the limit in the search for a personal means of expression at a time of undoubted personal and professional crisis. The opening movement, a complex and unpredictable take on sonata form that teems with a dazzling profusion of varied motifs, is followed by a short, eerie central movement. The finale opens with a funeral march leading to a climax of seismic physical force that gives way to a bleak and harrowing minor key coda. The Symphony has since become one of the most highly regarded of the composer’s large–scale works.
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*Week 40, Specialist Classical Chart issued by The Official Charts company
The Artists
The award–winning Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is the UK’s oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra, dating from 1840.The orchestra gives over sixty concerts each season in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and tours widely throughout the UK and internationally, most recently touring to China, Switzerland, France, Spain, Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic.In recent seasons world premiere performances have included major works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sir John Tavener, Karl Jenkins, Michael Nyman and Jennifer Higdon, alongside works by Liverpool–born composers including John McCabe, Emily Howard, Kenneth Hesketh and Mark Simpson.