Don’t press play without checking the volume levels first: Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra begin their new Shostakovich series with the Passacaglia from the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and its first chord is genuinely cataclysmic. It at once recalibrates your ears and sets the tone for the ensuing performance of the 10th Symphony, recorded live four months ago, one that is as tense as it is vibrant. The first movement, full of sinewy, characterful woodwind solos, is kept at a slow burn. The second is taut and exciting, bad cop to the good cop of the third movement, which early on has an almost Nutcracker-esque spring in its step. Nelsons chooses to allow some genuine triumph into the finale – he says it might be Shostakovich dancing on Stalin’s grave – but its perkiness is still razor sharp. The orchestra has just extended Nelsons’s contract, and this is why.
