Symphoniker Hamburg / Josef Špaček / Jiří Rožeň

A few years later, in his final symphony, Shostakovich would quote that galloping main theme from the fast part of Rossini’s overture. An erratic, dance-like motif that goes perfectly with Beethoven’s rousing Seventh Symphony! A few years after it was written, one critic (who surely did not imagine his words would be one of our absolute favourites two hundred years later) wrote: »It consists of four movements of almost 1/4 hour each, thus making the whole at least 3/4 hour, and it is a veritable quodlibet of tragic, comic, serious and trivial ideas, which stray here and there without context, are repeated ad nauseam, and almost burst because of the excessive noise of the timpani.« Why don’t you tell us what you really think, my friend!