Valery Gergiev’s unqualified success in revivifying the masterworks of Russian and Soviet Russian music theatre is not always matched by his achievements in comparable symphonic repertoire. That said, his own-label Mariinsky Shostakovich symphony series gets into its stride with this latest instalment, an odd pairing but one the maestro has favoured in concert. The Second Symphony (1927) fares best, its mostly modernistic idiom not a million miles away from that of the opera The Nose, of which the team have made an excellent recording (8/09). Experimental sonorities, lucidly rendered here, lead unexpectedly to a choral section extolling Lenin, October and the brotherhood of the proletariat.

Tub-thumping in a different vein, the Eleventh (1957) is Shostakovich at his most conservative and cinematic, the deployment of revolutionary songs embedding emotional memories superficially in line with the regime’s subsequently expounded ideology of socialist realism in cultural production. Favouring quick‑fire tempi, occasionally too fast for clear articulation, Gergiev avoids getting bogged down in dutiful note-spinning, perhaps tending to undersell the big, graphic moments that may or may not convey subversive intent. Climaxes are not necessarily balanced with an eye to textural clarity and the ambivalent oscillation of the bells at the close lacks precision. Mstislav Rostropovich in 2002 (LSO Live, 9/02) keeps the final bell and tam-tam strokes ringing on and on. The new disc has one point in common with that extraordinary marathon (uncoupled since it extends the work’s playing time to more than 72 minutes): it needs to be played loud or not at all. While the score has more terror and more warmth than Gergiev reveals, admirers will find plenty of compensating flair and drive. The sound is vivid and the booklet includes performer listings, sung texts and translations.