Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11- The Year 1905;

Charismatic young conductor
Vasily Petrenko launches his
Shostakovich Symphonies series
with the Eleventh , a highly
charged depiction of the 'Bloody
Sunday' massacre of over two
hundred peaceful demonstrators
by Czarist soldiers outside the
Winter Palace in St Petersburg
in 1905. Scored for a sizeable
orchestra of triple woodwind,
four horns, three each of
trumpets and trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion, celesta,
harps and strings, the Symphony
makes extensive use of
revolutionary songs as thematic
elements, as it progresses,
without pause, from the glacial
opening movement, Palace
Square, to the terrifying
massacre and its aftermath, The
Ninth of January, the funereal
third movement, Eternal
Memory, and the final movement,
The Tocsin, which culminates
with cataclysmic bell strokes.