An album released by Deutsche Grammophon on October 20th - the last in the series of complete symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Andris Nelsons. The symphonies with numbers 2, 3, 12, and 13 are included on this album. We listen to symphonies numbers 2 and 12 at Radio România Muzical.

In July 2015 the first episode of this extraordinary series of the complete Shostakovich symphonies was released. 8 years later, the collection is complete: 6 albums of the 15 symphonies and a chamber symphony. In addition, three Grammy Awards have been awarded for outstanding interpretations of these works.

The Sunday Times wrote on October 22nd: "This cycle is a major achievement, and this latest episode is as shattering and profound as its predecessors. It's hard to choose the best, but the chorus and orchestra in the second movement of the second symphony and Matthias Goerne in the opening of the 13th symphony are simply breathtaking."

The Second Symphony was written by Shostakovich for the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution and is entitled 'For October'. It was premiered in November 1927, and it is the work of a 21-year-old composer who had become well known by the time he was 19, thanks to his first symphony, which enjoyed resounding success. Although the subject is purely Soviet, the music of the second symphony is not so closely related to Soviet aesthetics, surprising in the modernity of the language and the incongruity between the message of the music itself and the stated theme. It was only to be the beginning of a life and creation unfolding in ambivalence: the most famous and successful Soviet composer, twice purged and waiting with a packed suitcase every night to be taken by the KGB for deportation to Siberia.

Andris Nelsons, a 44-year-old Latvian conductor, has at least some knowledge of the realities of Shostakovich's life through his country's history; he trained in St. Petersburg, among other places, and was a disciple of Mariss Jansons, a strong representative of the Russian conducting school. Andris Nelsons finds just the right tone for Shostakovich's Second Symphony, with the extraordinary Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Dmitri Shostakovich's 12th Symphony is included on the same album. This is the ideological pairing of the Second Symphony, inspired by the same historical event - the October 1917 revolution. The 12th Symphony is entitled 'The Year 1917', but compared to the one-part construction of the Second Symphony, it proposes a four-part structure, each bearing a title: Revolutionary Petrograd, Razliv, Aurora and Dawn of Humanity. Razliv was Lenin's country residence, and Aurora, the name of the cruiser who first fired into the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and thus triggered the 1917 revolution.

Even if you recognize Shostakovich's deeply personal language in this symphony, you will notice that this work dating from 1961 is less daring than the second symphony, written in 1927. It is also the first work Shostakovich dedicated to Lenin; let's not forget that Shostakovich did not become a member of the Communist Party until 1960. In any case, it is a complicated history lived by a brilliant composer.

You can't help but be impressed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra's clear, ample sound, the cohesion between parts, the enthusiastic performance of the brass players, the beautifully crafted sonic plans of this orchestra, handled with great skill by a conductor who proves both profound and inventive. Beyond history and ideology, great music and its great contemporary performers.