Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141

The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks shared a long and intense artistic collaboration, which his death in October 2021 brought to an abrupt end. The present recording of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony documents a concert from February 2015. This congenial partnership lasted for more than six decades. Orchestral musicians and singers enjoyed working with him just as much as the sound engineers of the BR did. As an interpreter of the symphonic repertoire, particularly that of the late German-Austrian Romantic period, Haitink was highly esteemed worldwide. The symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich were also always in the best of hands with him. His paramount principle was the transparency of the sound architecture of a musical composition with its multi-layered interweaving: utmost tonal sensitivity paired with a clearly structured interpretation of the score. As the last symphony in the oeuvre of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Fifteenth is a kind of symphonic final word. Even though he intended to write a “happy symphony” and this nickname has since become customary, any sense of cheerfulness in it has a dimension that is exaggerated into the bizarre and grotesque. The work also contains musical references, for example to Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture, Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung” (the so-called “fate motif”) and “Tristan und Isolde,” as well as Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck.” Quotes from his own earlier works also appear. Shostakovich’s symphony was composed in 1971 in Repino, a suburb of Saint Petersburg. It was premiered on January 8, 1972, under the baton of his son Maxim.