Solti conducts Shostakovich & Tchaikovsky

Two very different Russian symphonies, each with a powerful story to tell. Tchaikovsky’s "Pathétique" Symphony was his final masterpiece, an impassioned outpouring of melody and sorrow whose very name means "full of emotion". Shostakovich's Ninth might seem like its polar opposite: crisp, playful and bristling with pitch-black humour. But in Stalin’s Russia, those were dangerous qualities. Few conductors felt the tug of history like Sir Georg Solti, and few drove more directly for a piece's heart. This recording with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, captured live at Munich’s Philharmonie am Gasteig, finds both conductor and orchestra at their uncompromising best.