NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Krzysztof Urbański

Krzysztof Urbański impressed last season with a very political interpretation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. By the time Shostakovich composed his Fifth, he had already realised that brusquely expressed opinions like »That’s drivel, not music!« could be the difference between life and death when it came from Stalin’s mouth. As a result, the Russian composer lived in a perpetual conflict between artistic freedom and ideological conformity. Shostakovich was working on his Fourth Symphony when he became the subject of scrutiny. It was said that a mortal terror and a protest against the Soviet regime could be heard in the work’s preposterous marches and disturbingly cheerful passages. Shostakovich withdrew the most audacious sections shortly before the premiere in a move that probably saved his life.