Berlin (2 February 2023) The Berliner Philharmoniker and their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko will release their recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphonies 8-10 in a hardcover edition on the orchestra’s own label Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings on 24 February. The recordings were made between October 2020 and October 2021 during the Corona pandemic, in part under unusual conditions. As such, they document from a concert without an audience (Symphony No. 8) and a half-filled auditorium (Symphony No. 9) the gradual return to normality in the sold-out Philharmonie Berlin (Symphony No. 10).
In addition to two audio CDs, the edition includes a Blu-ray Disc with the concert videos of the recorded works as well as a 22-minute interview film with Kirill Petrenko. It also features the audio recordings in high-resolution studio quality and Dolby Atmos. The edition and the comprehensive booklet with in-depth texts on Shostakovich’s oeuvre were designed by the photographer Thomas Demand. His photographs symbolise the conflicting context in which Shostakovich created his works: on the outside, the oppressively uniform row of iron lockers; on the inside, photographs of flowers in Moscow’s Gorky Park.
The edition will be available from 24 February 2023 at
berliner-philharmoniker-recordings.com and from selected specialist retailers.
In his foreword to this recording, Kirill Petrenko writes: “It may sound paradoxical, but performing these three symphonies in a period of almost total isolation took me personally to a new level of understanding this music. I experienced something I hadn’t discovered in these works before.” During this time “we were able to make music together only under highly restrictive conditions, I found a closer connection with Shostakovich’s music than ever before, and it resulted in our playing his works more frequently and with special intensity.”