Acclaimed pianist Martha Algerich joins forces with cellist Mischa Maisky to perform the world premiere of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin's double concerto for piano, cello and orchestra, 'Romantic Offering'. Also featured are works by César Franck, Antonín Dvorak and Dmitri Shostakovich. Neeme Jarvi conducts the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.

Berlin's Waldbühne amphitheatre is the setting for this July 2011 performance in the Berliner Philharmoniker summer concerts season. Conducted by Riccardo Chailly, the orchestra plays a selection of works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Nina Rota, Ottorino Respighi and Paul Lincke.

Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the San Francisco Symphony for this performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, which was originally broadcast by the American television channel PBS in 2009 as part of the 'Keeping Score' classical music series.

Bruno Monsaingeon directs this profile of violinist David Oistrakh, who died in 1974. Oistrakh was a leading proponent of the Russian school, and his work is recalled here by friends and colleagues including Yehudi Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich.

Russia's Borodin String Quartet performs Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D major and String Quartet No. 2 in F major, as well as Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 3 in F major and String Quartet No. 8 in C minor in this recording from 1987.

A documentary following the acclaimed pianist on his 1957 trip to the Soviet Union. Featuring music by Bach, Berg, Webern and Shostakovich amongst others, the film includes previously unheard performances of Gould's concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, when, at the age of 24, he became the first North American to perform behind the Iron Curtain.

Teodor Currentzis conducts the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in these performances of works by Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich, recorded in 2013 at the Concertgebouw in Bruges. The pieces featured are Britten's Sinfonietta and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major, with soloist Steven Isserlis, and Symphony No. 1 in F Minor.

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic for this New Year gala concert, recorded live in Berlin on 31 December 2007. The programme includes: Borodin's 'Symphony No. 2 in B minor' and 'Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances'; Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' and 'Khovanshchina: Prelude'; and Shostakovich's 'Dance from the Golden Age - Suite, Op. 22'.

After considerable hesitation and soul-searching I have decided to publish the letters Dmitry Dmitriyevich Shostakovich wrote to me. This choice by the composer's close friend Isaak Glikman brought the tormented feelings of the musical genius into public view. Now those feelings resound in the first substantial collection of Shostakovich's letters to appear in English.From the early 1930s until his death in 1975 Shostakovich wrote regularly to Glikman, a Leningrad theater critic and historian. The 288 letters included in this volume began in 1941, at the time of Operation Barbarossa and the composition of the controversial (Leningrad) Symphony no. 7, and continue until 1974, by which time Shostakovich was too frail to write. Glikman's extensive introduction explains that the earlier letters were lost presumably left behind when both men were evacuated from besieged Leningrad. In his account of those years, Glikman relates personal details of the composer's life during the height of the Stalinist Terror, including Shostakovich's response to the public humiliation inflicted by the regime after the premiere of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.Taken together, the letters and Glikman's fascinating commentary form a portrait of a complex and acutely sensitive personality endowed with enormous moral integrity, humanity, compassion, and a sharp, often self-deprecating, sense of humor. The book recounts some of the most pivotal episodes of Shostakovich's life, including the long withdrawal of the Symphony no. 4, the regime's 1948 attacks on the composer, his subsequent trips to the United States and other Western countries, his frame of mind upon joining the Communist party in 1960, his reactions to the music of his contemporaries, and his composition of the devastating late symphonies and final string quartets.The battles over the politics of Dmitry Shostakovich and his music continue with undiminished vehemence, and Story of a Friendship is sure to occasion still more argument. At the same time, the book provides a unique opportunity better to understand the man and his music, on the one hand, and the regime that alternately hailed and reviled him, on the other."

Teodor Currentzis conducts the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in these performances of works by Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich, recorded in 2013 at the Concertgebouw in Bruges. The pieces featured are Britten's Sinfonietta and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major, with soloist Steven Isserlis, and Symphony No. 1 in F Minor.