With its twin themes of death and resistance, Shostakovich’s symphony of sorrowful songs is as potent and pithy and defiant and beautiful as anything in his catalogue. ‘When I combine music with words,’ he wrote, ‘it is more difficult to misunderstand my intentions.’ And when the instrumental palette comprises a mere handful of strings and some judiciously particular percussion, the sounds are intensified in ways that totally transcend the letter of the printed page. Sonically, this piece is as unique as it is mysterious. Only Shostakovich’s kindred spirit Britten tapped into music of the night with such concision and economy. I’m thinking, of course, of his Nocturne.

Gordan Nikolitch’s Netherlands Chamber Orchestra furtively cross the threshold of the opening ‘De profundis’, the sighs of string basses barely etched on our consciousness. But the first thing one notices is the baritonal colour of the male soloist Thomas Oliemans – and these words belong to and sink to the unfathomable depths of a true basso profundo. The bottom notes are a stretch too far for Oliemans; and although we can already hear his keen and impassioned response to words and the benevolence of the later poem ‘O Delvig, Delvig!’ seems already to beckon, this music has the distinctive timbre of the Russian bass written into every inflection. An auditory adjustment is necessary. Then again, the incisiveness of the leaner voice truly lays bare the suppurating imagery of Apollinaire’s ‘The Zaporozhian Cossacks’ Answer to the Sultan of Constantinople’, and his intelligence and insight trump authenticity in most instances.

So, too, the Israeli soprano Gal James, who is by no stretch of the imagination a dramatic soprano in the Galina Vishnevskaya mould but who has the vibrancy and reach of a Mimì or a Rusalka and the temperament to ignite the ‘Malagueña’ or ‘Loreley’. The latter has the most astonishing sonic and emotional range, and then there is ‘The Suicide’, to which James’s beautifully nuanced singing brings a hypnotic limpidity.

But it is the piece itself that unfailingly makes the most indelible impression and Gordan Nikolitch leads from the front, maintaining the organic tension of the performance across and beyond the suspenseful transitions which link the poems. What could be creepier or more unsettling than the hollow time-marking interlude ‘At the Santé Prison’ or more affecting than Floris Mijnders’s cello solos, which seem specifically to underscore the many lines of protest while nodding acknowledgement to Shostakovich’s great champion Mstislav Rostropovich?