Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 14

Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony has often been overlooked between the famous heroic testimony of the Fifth and the overwhelming wartime statements of the Seventh and the Eighth. However it is a profoundly personal work, juxtaposing deeply felt sorrow in the slow first movement with hollow cheer in the latter two – an ironic response to official demands for lightness, cheerfulness and optimism. The Fourteenth is even less traditional in conception, a haunting and affecting song-cycle for two voices and chamber orchestra on poems by several authors unified by the theme of death.