Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No.10

Continuing a Shostakovich series launched in 2020, Tugan Sokhiev conducts the Symphony No 10, a tension-ridden work composed shortly after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Sokhiev, previously Music Director of the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse from 2008 to 2022, trained with a contemporary and classmate of Shostakovich, the influential St Petersburg-based teacher Ilya Musin (1903-99). When Warner Classics released the Symphony No 8, Le Figaro judged it “an opportunity to assess the incredible work done [in Toulouse] over the past 12 years by Sokhiev, whose Shostakovich 8 is as impressive for its consistency and density as for its clarity.” Diapason, the leading French music magazine, judged the Symphony No 8 to be worthy of a Diapason d’Or; the reviewer described the Toulouse players as “the only French orchestra that can play this repertoire in this way”, and praised Sokhiev for “focusing entirely on the tension of the narrative, achieving incandescence as the music enters a world of increasing turbulence and conflict”.