I had hoped that this might prove the perfect recording with which to remember the late, lamented Yakov Kreizberg – I heard him on a couple of occasions give really electrifying live performances of this marvellous piece. He and his half-brother Semyon Bychkov have both held a deep attachment to it, as have I. In some ways it is the most personal of all the Shostakovich symphonies and perhaps the biggest regret here is that the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo never quite transcend the dots on the page, with a degree of circumspection always standing between us and the raw emotionalism, to say nothing of the visceral excitement, of the piece.

One feels that most pointedly in the great eleventh-hour oration of the cor anglais in the finale, where the most pertinent of all the revolutionary songs – ‘Bare your heads!’ – puts aside defiance and quietly mourns the fallen. But so squarely is it phrased here that, far from portending liberation to come, the bar-lines seem to imprison it. And it isn’t just individuals, it’s the collective fervour of the playing that falls short. The eerie calm of the ‘Palace Square’ is atmospherically evoked, with chilling dissonances in the slow-moving chords registering by stealth. But punches are pulled in the really emotive climaxes with, for instance, the solo onslaught of the percussion battery in the ‘Ninth of January’ massacre almost apologetic for its brutal intrusion and the trenchant goose-stepping in the finale immaculate as opposed to menacing.

There can be no doubting Kreizberg’s grasp of this piece – its storm, stress, sweep and ideology. Those revolutionary songs carry a heavy burden and he shares it. But ultimately it’s the difference here between a satisfactory soundtrack to these momentous events and something which truly and overwhelmingly conveys what they meant to those, like Shostakovich, whose lives were impacted by them. But, like the bells at the close of The Year 1905 (too muted here by half), Kreizberg’s memory will resonate on.