Aptly, the Mussorgsky cycle in Shostakovich's orchestration precedes the symphony. Shostakovich himself made it clear that this darkly memorable cycle was the direct inspiration for this last of his song-cycle symphonies, similarly on the subject of death. It was in 1962 that he tackled the orchestration, following up his realizations of Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, but it was another seven years before he completed the symphony, dedicated to his friend, Benjamin Britten. In 1970 when it was given its Western premiere at The Maltings, Snape, it emerged clearly not just as a darkly pessimistic comment on life and death, but as a gesture against the constraints of the Soviet system, still very much in place. Like Symphony No. 13, inspired by Evtushenko poems, it represented a bold statement against authority, making its impact all the more moving. Now, more than two decades later, this sequence of 11 finely balanced movements stands as a lasting tribute to the vitality of the composer's imagination even in his last years of illness.
Moving as Jarvi's account of the symphony is, more overtly expressive, less biting than most rivals, it is the Mussorgsky cycle as sung by Brigitte Fassbaender that more than anything makes this disc special. With an astonishing range of tonal colouring in the voice, she underlines each word vividly to bring out the sharply differentiated character of each of the four songs: the sinister ''Lullaby'', the threatening ''Serenade'', the insidious ''Trepak'' and the final violent portrait of ''Field-marshal Death''. Particularly in that last song Shostakovich's use of brass adds to the power of the original, and I am only sorry that this orchestration has so far been relatively neglected on disc. Quite apart from the advantages of having a tangy mezzo voice on this DG disc, Temirkanov's rival RCA version with Sergei Leiferkus has a much less apt coupling.
It is Leiferkus who is the powerful bass soloist in the Jarvi account of the symphony, not always as firmly focused as his finest rivals but full-toned and intense, totally idiomatic in his expressiveness. He and Ljuba Kazarnovskaya evince the operatic elements in the extended exchanges of Guillaume Apollinaire's ''Lorelei'', for example, without inflating the melodrama. Jarvi and Kazarnovskaya also bring out the waywardness of the fourth song, ''The Suicide'', with its Ophelia-like overtones, again a setting of Apollinaire. Though Jarvi's orchestra is not as bitingly precise or cuttingly intense in the more dramatic songs as, for example, the Concertgebouw in Haitink's Decca version, he is particularly good at bringing out both the atmospheric elements and the wry, dark humour. Though the sound is not quite as spacious as in the 1980 Decca digital recording (now reissued at mid price with another apt coupling, the Marina Tsvetaeva cycle), it is full and satisfying. It may not be an obvious first recommendation but the coupling makes it a vital issue none the less (don't forget the hair-raising live Barshai account from 1969 now available on Russian Disc).'