Shostakovich had never had it worse: his latest opera, Lady Macbeth, had been panned. And not just by an ordinary critic: Joseph Stalin himself had paid a visit to the opera house. The official Soviet opinion of the work? “Muddle instead of music.”

Shostakovich therefore pulled his Symphony No. 4 out of rehearsals and regrouped. He determined to write “a Soviet artist’s response to justified criticism,” a work that would become his Symphony No. 5.

Join me and Akiko as we talk Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, and Francisco Coll, along with guest artists Gustavo Gimeno, conductor, and Javier Perianes, piano!