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Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 6 & 12 Vasily Petrenko conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in this eagerly awaited addition to Naxos' Shostakovich Cycle

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This is the sixth disc in Vasily Petrenko's Shostakovich cycle, which continues to take critics by storm.

"Previous releases in Vasily Petrenko's Shostakovich cycle for Naxos have been heaped with praise, and this superb pairing of two of the less performed symphonies comfortably maintains the same high standard."
Andrew Clements, The Guardian ****

"In lesser hands, this music can become an exercise in near-aimless wandering. Here, though, it's a study in existential despair... Petrenko and the orchestra give noble effort, depth and weight... [a] superb performance."
NPR Classical

Shostakovich's Sixth and Twelfth Symphonies both had their origins in large-scale projects about Lenin, though the Sixth was eventually to emerge as one of the composer's most abstract and idiosyncratic symphonies. The long, intensely lyrical and meditative slow movement that opens the work is one of the composer's most striking. The Twelfth, one of the least played of Shostakovich's symphonies in the West, became less a celebration of Lenin's legacy than a chronological depiction of events during the Bolshevik Revolution.

"The playing is fabulously crisp and committed, while the interpretations combine atmosphere and a sense of proportion to the benefit of the youthful First, which receives an eerily effective performance, free of exaggeration."
Financial Times on Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3