Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra explore the profound ambivalences of the Shostakovich’s most performed symphony, the Fifth, written in 1937 at a time when he was under intense personal and political pressure from the authorities. The jaunty, neo-classical character of the Ninth Symphony (1945) prompted Shostakovich to remark that ‘musicians will like to play it, and critics will delight in blasting it’

Nikolai Andreevich Roslavets (Russian: Николай Андреевич Рославец) (1881 -1944) was a significant Soviet modernist composer. Roslavets was a convinced modernist and cosmopolitan thinker. His music was officially suppressed in the USSR from 1930 onwards.