“It is an amazing psychological drama” – that is how Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, describes Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. The Ninth and Tenth also vividly reflect Shostakovich’s struggle with the Stalinist regime – and his self-assertion. Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings is now releasing the recordings of Symphonies 8–10 as the orchestra’s second major hardcover edition with Kirill Petrenko.

“It is an amazing psychological drama” – that is how Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, describes Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. The Ninth and Tenth also vividly reflect Shostakovich’s struggle with the Stalinist regime – and his self-assertion. Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings is now releasing the recordings of Symphonies 8–10 as the orchestra’s second major hardcover edition with Kirill Petrenko.

Musically, each of the three symphonies is a world of its own – what unites them is the desire for freedom: once whispered behind closed doors, once ironically distorted, once shouted out. Shostakovich’s Eighth presented a tragedy with a forced smile at authority craving for patriotic anthems. In his Ninth Symphony, the composer made a surprising about-face, so that he had to remain silent as a symphonist until after Stalin’s death – in order to survive.

Following his death, the Tenth immediately erupted from Shostakovich – after an eightyear creative break. Kirill Petrenko describes the work as the “greatest stroke of liberation in Shostakovich’s artistic output after the Fifth”.

The 9th Symphony in E-flat Major, Opus 70 by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1944 and 1945. It is a five-movement symphony with an opening movement in classical sonata form.

With his Ninth Symphony, the composer then made a surprising about-face, so that he had to remain silent as a symphonist until after Stalin’s death – in order to survive himself. Not only the tradition-heavy numbering of the Ninth, but also the fact that the war had been won led the people and officials of the Soviet Union to hope for a gigantic heroic celebration. Instead of redemption at the end of the war, Shostakovich saw the countless victims – and the approach of the next catastrophe. In the distancing tone of Viennese classicism and with grotesque cheerfulness, his Ninth therefore depicts a circus world that held up a distorting mirror to the regime.