Lintu conducts Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony

It’s a bitter irony, but bad politics sometimes produce great art. Shostakovich wrote his Eighth Symphony at the height of the Second World War, and every bar of this colossal work resounds with violent struggle. Schnittke’s Viola Concerto was born in the dying days of the Soviet Union: a voice of sorrow, mischief and subversion beneath the grey skies of the Cold War.