Deutsche Grammophon proudly continues the widely acclaimed, Grammy winning Shostakovich Symphony cycle with Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Andris Nelsons is the Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and new Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. With both appointments, and in leading a pioneering alliance between these two esteemed institutions, he is firmly underlined as one of the most renowned, exciting and innovative conductors on the international scene today.

After the “scandalously successful” (Sunday Times) Symphony No.10 in 2015 and “the sheer expressive beauty” (Gramophone magazine) of Symphonies Nos. 5, 8, 9 from 2016 Andris Nelsons and his Bostonians turn their attention to the extrovert Fourth and dramatic Eleventh – both recorded live for the third instalment of this long-term collaboration of the Boston Symphony Orchestra – “America's most cultured orchestra” (BBC Music Magazine).

Each of the symphonies has a specific political background…

With its vast instrumental forces and epic length, the Fourth Symphony apparently was too difficult, raucous and pessimistic for Stalin’s Russia. But more importantly, officials were able to show that even an artist as celebrated as Shostakovich was not exempt from the Party’s control. Shostakovich himself had to announce that he had withdrawn the symphony and the premiere scheduled in 1936 was canceled. The “lost” Fourth Symphony received its belated premiere in Moscow in 1961 – twenty-five years later than planned. (…) “overwhelming in its intensity”, Nelson’s conducting maintained “a laser-like focus on the music’s character and attained roof-lifting force” (Boston Globe concert review). Rather notably: a young violinist Vyacheslav Uritsky played in that belated and very exciting premiere of the Fourth Symphony in 1961 and Mr. Uritsky also still plays in the BSO and these recordings.

The dramatic Eleventh Symphony commemorating the Revolution of 1905 was immediately hailed as a work of “deeply Russian and national art”. But it may have a double meaning: was it really the great patriotic work that Soviet officials heard in 1957? Until today it remains up to the listener to decide if Shostakovich also meant it as a critique of Soviet power in the wake of the Hungarian revolt of 1956. “Among many other things, the Eleventh is music remembering music remembering an older dream of freedom.” (Boston Globe)