Album: Shostakovich, Orango/Symphony No 4 – LA Phil/Salonen (Deutsche Grammophon)

Lost until 2004, the piano score of the prologue to Shostakovich's abandoned opera Orango blazes with colour in Gerard McBurney's orchestration.

In 30 minutes there is enough in Orango's backstory as a newspaper baron to whet one's appetite for the rest of the opera. Instead, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Philharmonic turn to the composer's furious and beautiful Fourth Symphony, itself suppressed until 1961.