These performances are CSO music director designate Klaus Mäkelä’s first Shostakovich on record and shows off the Oslo Philharmonic’s pedigree in the music of Shostakovich, one it learned with former chief conductor Mariss Jansons. Jansons studied with Yevgeny Mravinsky, the Principal Conductor of the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Philharmonic, the man who premiered no fewer than five of Shostakovich’s symphonies. The release of this album has been timed to align with Mäkelä’s debut (August 2024) at the Salzburg Festival conducting the Oslo Philharmonic in the Fifth Symphony and concluding his fourth season as the orchestra’s chief conductor.