Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 (2005)

Conductor Mark Wigglesworth made his major-label debut on BMG in 1995 leading Schoenberg's chamber orchestra version of Mahler's symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde, but since then he's concentrated almost exclusively on the symphonies of Shostakovich for BIS. He started with the gargantuan Seventh in 1996, topped that with a combination of the searing Fifth, the blistering Sixth, and the bludgeoning Tenth in 1997, then topped that with a devastating Fourteenth in 1999, all of them with the BBC National Orchestra of ... Read More

Conductor Mark Wigglesworth made his major-label debut on BMG in 1995 leading Schoenberg's chamber orchestra version of Mahler's symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde, but since then he's concentrated almost exclusively on the symphonies of Shostakovich for BIS. He started with the gargantuan Seventh in 1996, topped that with a combination of the searing Fifth, the blistering Sixth, and the bludgeoning Tenth in 1997, then topped that with a devastating Fourteenth in 1999, all of them with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Six years later, BIS released Wigglesworth's follow-up, the harrowing Eighth, with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and it proves to be as successful as his previous Shostakovich recordings. Wigglesworth is an individualist among Shostakovich conductors and while there is no less agonizing pain and monumental suffering in his interpretations as in the great Soviet performances, there is also a deep and profound faith in humanity that they understandably lack. In... Read Less