Exceptional artistry, saluting the wartime sufferings of a great city

There’s a thrilling energy about this live recording from its very opening, when the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s powerful string section launches Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony on its epic journey.

Shostakovich was living in the city when, in 1941, the invading German army approached and besieged it. Eventually flown to safety, he completed this enormous four-movement work; and a performance given in Leningrad itself, defiantly relayed through loudspeakers at the enemy, has passed into legend. When the siege ended in 1944, over a million civilians had died of cold and starvation.

Mariss Jansons and his magnificent orchestra do stirring justice to every stage of the music’s progress, generating relentless menace in the first movement’s drumbeat march (beginning a few minutes in). And in the finale’s closing paean to the city’s unconquerable spirit, an additional Concertgebouw Orchestra brass group adds extra splendour to the performance’s thunderous power.