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. 
The 1905 Symphony is 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. - “All praise to the budget label Naxos for signing a deal with the [RLPO] and their Russian wizard for a series of major recordings….[Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony] presents abundant evidence of the orchestra’s new glory…Throughout, the orchestra’s ensemble spirit is so tight that you could cut yourself on the music’s edges. ... Watch out for more Petrenko magic on Naxos.” The Times on 8570568