London Symphony Orchestra & Gianandrea Noseda Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 Hybrid Multi-Channel & Stereo SACD

"Certain moments in history gave composers the possibility of saying something deeply personal", says LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda. "And Shostakovich speaks equally to us today." As Noseda and the LSO continue their journey through Shostakovich's symphonies, which span the composer's lifetime, they take on one of his biggest creations, the Seventh. Written during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, it is shattering in scale and impact. For Noseda, "you can hear the march of the soldiers, the obsessive repetition, a loop you cannot escape," in the relentless, pounding rhythms, the struggle towards a fragile victory.

Noseda demands much of the London Symphony in the work's lengthy quiet passages; these can easily drag, but in his hands, they are incredibly detailed, and the orchestra's wind players respond magnificently. Perhaps the 'invasion theme' area in the first movement, moving from music modeled on Ravel's Bolero to a sarcastic reference to Hitler's favorite work, The Merry Widow, has more of a minatory edge elsewhere, in Bernstein or Mravinsky. However, Noseda's accomplishment is considerable, and all the more so inasmuch as he takes the work at a deliberate 74 minutes, without letting it flag. The engineering, too, is very strong; audience noise is stripped out, but an X [factor] from the excitement of live performance remains.