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The world will hardly ever find the unambiguously correct answer to what was the underlying "meaning" of Shostakovich's music. Was there anyone at all? Was he making fun of Stalin or paying tribute to him? Was he an elitist "formalist" who should be shamed and criticized, or a loyal party soldier who did honor to the Soviet state? Or was he really just a privileged official who wrote his music as he pleased and tried to go under the party's radar? Shostakovich spent most of his career falling in and out of favor with the communist authorities. And when the 10th Symphony premiered in December 1953, just nine months after Stalin's death, the expected speculation arose as to whether the work can be considered a musical portrait of the late dictator. This thesis had its supporters - but we can also choose to be content with hearing the 10th as an intensely emotional and dramatic tale of universal, human conditions, emotions and conflicts, written by one of the 20th century's undisputed greatest artists.

Join the great musical centrifuge with this gut-wrenching concert. Never has it been more relevant to mock the urge of Russian intellectuals to express themselves despite changing oppressive regimes – an unfortunately recurring relevant theme. Shostakovich had to wait until after Stalin's death to have his daring and emotionally charged 1st Violin Concerto premiered - with a solo part so demanding that David Oistrach himself had to ask the composer for just an 8-measure break at the start of the 3rd movement because in it at least to be able to wipe the sweat from the forehead! It is a wild concert on all parameters – not least the 6-minute long solo cadenza is unique in the repertoire.

Four Eastern European composers complement each other with works that are very different in both instrumentation and expression – from Prokofiev's quintet for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass to Janáček's 1st string quartet, nicknamed Kreuzer after Tolstoy's novel, with reference to Beethoven's violin sonata. Where Janácek's programmatic work has a romantic expression, Prokofiev's is more modern; almost circus-like. Originally the latter was composed for a dance performance, but the music is said to have been too complicated for the dancers; fortunately the work has survived. Both of these works were composed in the early twenties – 1923 and 24 respectively.

Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture is a work that, in a Tchaikovsky-sensitive way, both tells the lyrical part of Shakespeare's story about the two young lovers and evokes how much the two young people's families were at war with each other. The music is a solid masterpiece that constantly appears in popular culture, but can still give audiences chills and breathlessness.

Several composers who lived in the Soviet era turned to a spiritually inspired music, in a kind of inner exile. There are several examples; the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks is one of them. Throughout his work there is a special spiritual tone. Castillo Interior is from 2014, and he says that the title came to him when he was in a meditation house by the Baltic Sea – inspired by a saint far away, the Spanish Teresa of Avila, who in the 16th century wrote a book with the same title, where the soul is described as a castle created from a single diamond.