Celebrated international pianist Peter Donohoe continues his series of Shostakovich releases on Signum Classics, following his recent release of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (SIGCD396). For this new recording he is accompanied for the concertos by the Orchestra of the Swan under their artistic director David Curtis. In the years since his unprecedented success as Silver Medal winner of the 1982 7th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Peter Donohoe has built an extraordinary world-wide career, encompassing a huge repertoire and over forty years’ experience as a pianist, as well as continually exploring many other avenues in music-making. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

Alpha is now reissuing three recordings from its back catalogue, the first album is of the conductor Teodor Currentzis. An opportunity to discover or rediscover three very different styles, and three facets of the talen tof ''the enfant terrible of classical music'', as Le Figaro called him, for whom ''music is intended to transport into the waking world the sentiments we feel when we dream''. With their invitation to travel through different periods and territories, these reissues may be appreciated both separately and as a triptych revealing the artistic approach of Teodor Currentzis and his ensemble MusicAeterna, from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 by way of Mozart's Requiem, the Salzburg composer's last work, here given an invigorating reinterpretation.

The spirit of Gustav Mahler looms over the pages of Shostakovich’s turbulent, sprawling and enigmatic Symphony No. 4, a work so uncompromising that for many years he suppressed its performance, fearing public censure. Mixing bombast with banality, savagery with sarcasm, this baffling yet profound work is also one of his most startlingly original. It’s paired with his ever popular Symphony No. 10, a brooding and lyrical masterpiece which is said to contain a musical portrait of Joseph Stalin in the impetuous second movement and in whose third and fourth movements Shostakovich artfully weaves a musical motif based on his own name which emerges resplendent in the spirited finale. This triumphant release is the latest in a series of recordings for Pentatone by the Russian National Orchestra. Their Shostakovich cycle was widely acclaimed as “the most exciting cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies to be put down…and easily the best recorded.” (SACD.net). The Symphony No. 7, conducted by Paavo Järvi, won the Diapason d’Or de l’annee 2015 and was nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award for Best Suurpund Sound recording.

Gustavo Gimeno conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg in a fascinating survey of confident, assured and striking orchestral works by the young Shostakovich. This new recording from Pentatone includes his breathtaking Symphony No. 1 Op. 10 - the student work which brought Shostakovich international fame. While indebted to the Russian masters, Shostakovich's early works nevertheless demonstrate his precocious brilliance, originality and falir and they offer an intriguing glimpse at the evolution of his distinctive, mature style. From the easy going and good humored Scherzo Op. 1, the Tchaikovskian Theme and Variations in B-flat major Op. 3, or the Stravinskyan Scherzo Op. 7, his youthful vitality is never in doubt. But with his Symphony No 1 Op. 10 he produced his first masterpiece and found his own distinctive voice. It's a thrilling work full of sardonic edginess, pained introspection and dramatic outbursts, and closes with a barnstorming finale. Composed 10 years later, the aptly titled Five Fragments for orchestra Op. 42 are short, pungent and austere pieces; the arresting style is modernist but the sound is unmistakeably Shostakovich. Following his acclaimed conducting debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2014, Gustavo Gimeno took up the post of Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg with the 2015-2016 season. An auspicious collaboration with Pentatone followed in 2016 and three releases with the orchestra are planned in 2017. "His musical rhetorics are refined, his grip on the structure of the compositions is accurate and convincint" observed Joep Stapel in the NRC Handelsblad, "Gimeno knew how to keep the tension and made the musicians...excel." Elsewhere in a busy international schedule, Gimeno has debuted with major orchestras in Europe and America, and toured with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to Taiwan and Japan.