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Sixth Symphonies of Tchaikovsky & Shostakovich

Together with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Mariss Jansons presents the Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich Sixth Symphonies in recent live recordings. - These recordings follow his Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony (released on BR-KLASSIK). - Mariss Jansons formerly worked as assistant to legendary conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, conductor of the first performance of Shostakovich's Sixth. Today, Mr. Jansons ranks as one of the foremost interpreters of Russian symphonic music. Two Sixth Symphonies, both composed by Russians and both first performed in St. Petersburg/Leningrad. The two works are confessions in music, written by composers who had to conceal their true natures and thoughts from the political and social realities surrounding them, and consequently took the risk of 'saying the unsayable' through music. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, first performed in 1893 only a few days before his death, is the work of an artist for whom the symphony was the ""musical confession of a soul which, filled to bursting from the effects of life, unburdens itself through sound."" Tchaikovsky wanted the programme of this symphony later termed the ""Pathétique"" to remain ""a mystery to all."" And the ""Pathétique"" did indeed only become a success once its creator had died. Echoing Tchaikovsky's mysterious musical legacy, Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6 also puzzled people through its lack of symphonic conventions there is, for instance, no joyful and victorious finale. In 1939, despite the fact that Stalin's regime with its cultural repression had long kept him under observation, Shostakovich produced a Sixth Symphony that prompted stormy applause from the audience, yet left the critics and ideologists nonplussed: They referred to it as a ""headless torso"". The ""healthy joy in life"" promoted by the doctrine of socialist realism is nowhere in evidence here: instead, the symphony conveys a powerful sense of gloom, filled with glaringly grotesque exaggerations. The first performance of Shostakovich's symphonic masterpiece was conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky; Mariss Jansons would later become his student and assistant. As an interpreter, the Latvian-born chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks thus has a direct link to the composer. Both symphonies were recorded only very recently at exciting live performances in Munich's main concert halls.