None of the film music on these discs is from Shostakovich’s top drawer, but it still makes a fascinating listen, not least because he kept on composing in this genre throughout his career. As a young man, movies were a more constant companion than string quartets and there can be little doubt that accompanying silent films at the piano had a profound impact on his whole compositional approach.

The BBC Philharmonic have given accomplished performances of Russian music since the days of Sir Edward Downes, and they enjoy a particularly successful association with Vassily Sinaisky. The choral entry at the very start of their programme might imply a lack of authentic heft (and unanimity), but the orchestra quickly assumes the dominant role and the recording is well up to the best standards of the house. Like the rest of the programme, A Girl Alone, or Alone (1930) as it is more usually rendered in English, is not new to the catalogue. As with its precursor, the latterly more celebrated New Babylon, the scenario and direction were by Kozintsev and Trauberg, only this time the music was pre-recorded for synchronisation with the moving pictures; the dialogue was still shown as text on the screen.

The excerpts here give us a good idea of the composer’s stylistic dexterity before the change in cultural climate blunted his high jinks. If Sinaisky doesn’t relish the grotesqueries quite as much as Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (Melodiya – nla), he enjoys much more natural Chandos sound – you can seek out Michail Jurowski’s Berlin recording if you want to hear more of what survives in print.

King Lear (1970) proved to be Shostakovich’s final (realised) cinematic outing, undertaken mainly because it was a long-pondered Kozintsev production. The content is typical of his pared-down late style. Indeed, the CD concludes on an unusually downbeat note with the solitary piping of a solo clarinet to represent the Fool.

The remainder of the collection comprises sometimes intriguing, sometimes formulaic music from the 1930s heyday of Socialist Realism and Stalin’s Great Terror. More frankly populist than anything Prokofiev ever essayed in the medium, the selection from the Maxim trilogy includes a ‘Waltz’ (track 4) that may be familiar to listeners from one or other of the compilations that showcase the ‘lighter’ Shostakovich. Track 5 includes an early appearance for the revolutionary song that was later to animate the finale of the Eleventh Symphony. Sinaisky, always right inside the idiom, is just the musician to make such stuff sound deft and spontaneous rather than cynically compliant. Some ardent Shostakovich completists may find the selection awkward, cutting across as it does several earlier film music projects. Nevertheless, the Chandos disc merits a strong recommendation in its own right.

The Marco Polo release presents music intended to accompany Mikhail Chiaureli’s shameless cinematic glorifications of Stalin at a time when there was otherwise little paid work being offered to condemned ‘formalists’. In March 1949, composer and director were prevailed upon to represent the Soviet Union at the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York, and The Fall of Berlin was produced that same year. At one point in the score, Shostakovich seems to be trying out the Scherzo of the Tenth Symphony, which some have earmarked as a portrait of the dictator (track 11). Less speculatively, one might suggest that one of its principal themes is shamelessly ripped off from Borodin’s Second Symphony. Also embroiled in this project was Evgeny Dolmatovsky, Shostakovich’s future collaborator on the oratorio, Song of The Forests, which should give you some idea of the aspirations involved. For good or ill, we get more of the score here than in previous accounts of the suite from Serebrier (RCA, 3/91 – nla) and Jurowski (listed above).

The Unforgettable Year 1919 (1951) is probably more interesting, though less of the music seems to have survived. The mini-piano concerto (track 21) replaces tub-thumping with unmitigated kitsch and is perhaps the better for it; it was previously recorded by Dmitri Alexeev as a makeweight for his highly regarded Shostakovich piano concertos (CFP, 1/89). The whirlwind scherzo (track 20) is also great fun. Or would be if the orchestra could get round the notes. Throughout, the playing can be spirited but is best described as serviceable. And, while copious notes explain the precise provenance of what we are hearing, the translation leaves much to be desired. The apparent denigration of Hollywood movie music makes no sense whatever in this context. Completists will rejoice but should expect no revelations.