Despite a recent snippy comment in the Spectator, I still find Mark Wigglesworth one of the more interesting conductors on the international circuit and his Shostakovich cycle has been distinguished. This release is a popular combination of Shostakovich’s symphonic Alpha and Omega – his First and Fifteenth symphonies. Both were recorded in 2006 and the First appeared with the Second and Third Symphonies on a single CD. Why it has taken almost a decade for BIS to release the Fifteenth is anyone’s guess.

The composer burst on the scene with his First Symphony, written at 18, with staggering assurance. It’s an engaging blend of youthful cheekiness and subversion with darker undercurrents. Wigglesworth and his Dutch orchestra handle the kaleidoscopic orchestration and signature moods – humour, wit, agitated energy – deftly, though tempi are measured.

The Fifteenth, composed when Shostakovich was already ill, is one of music’s great enigmas by
a composer who raised enigma to an art form. The opening, whose first notes we hear on a glockenspiel, was meant to portray a toyshop. Only Shostakovich could conjure up an atmosphere so sinister conveying innocence. The first climax doesn’t occur until the second movement. Here we are in familiar desperation territory and Wigglesworth gives it the appropriate heft. In the finale he paces the bleak passacaglia perfectly.