On April 2, 2024, Klaus Mäkelä was named Zell Music Director Designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This week, we feature performances from that special moment, beginning with Zinovjev’s Batteria. Next, we hear two works by Shostakovich: The First Cello Concerto with Sol Gabetta, followed by a powerful reading of the Tenth Symphony.

In 1937 at the height of the Stalinist purges, Shostakovich was in disgrace – an outcast who feared for his life. (He slept in the stairwell outside his apartment so that his family might be spared if he were arrested.) In these darkest moments, he somehow found the courage to write his Fifth Symphony, publishing it with the ironic subtitle …

Manfred Honeck, the longtime music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, leads music by Anton Bruckner and Dmitri Shostakovich.

We visit Lyadov’s Enchanted Lake and Swan Lake of Tchaikovsky before hearing the Symphony No. 10 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Alan Gilbert conducts.

Polish conductor Krzysztof Urbański also leads the orchestra in the gripping Symphony No. 10 by Dmitri Shostakovich.

A retrospective on Leonard Bernstein’s revolutionary concert series, which introduced countless listeners to classical music. And Jamie Bernstein, daughter of the influential conductor-composer, reflect on her father’s legacy.

Were these composers doomed or divinely inspired? Decide for yourself!

Works embodying the more private, personal, and experimental facets of Shostakovich’s musicianship.

Sol Gabetta, whose “enthusiastic music-making and animated style are completely infectious” (Classical Voice), makes her CSO debut in Shostakovich’s captivating Cello Concerto No. 1 — a riveting journey through themes of defiance, sorrow, and triumph. Electrifying conductor Klaus Mäkelä frames the program with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, a searing portrait of the composer’s tormented life in Stalinist Russia, and the U.S. …

Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko leads the Berlin Phil — of which he is chief conductor — in two landmark Shostakovich symphonies.

Featuring conductors Leonard Bernstein and Kurt Masur.

Written under threat by the tyrant Joseph Stalin, the Fifth Symphony is as satisfying as it is subversive. Giancarlo Guerrero conducts.

Plus chamber music and a live score for a silent film.

Part two of an exploration of a fruitful collaboration features works by Beethoven, Bloch, and Shostakovich.

Conductor Cristian Măcelaru leads the San Francisco Symphony in Dmitri Shostakovich’s madcap First Symphony and Wynton Marsalis’ celebration of Black history and folklore, Blues Symphony. San Francisco Symphony English horn player Russ de Luna stars in Outi Tarkiainen’s Milky Ways.

Exploring the Soviet-Russian composer’s chamber works.

Take out the high courts and bring in the dancing elephants: here are some of the strangest opera plots that have ever been put to paper.

Pianist Yuja Wang joins the Oslo Philharmonic and its Chief Conductor Klaus Mäkelä for a program of 20th-century masterpieces by Ravel and Shostakovich.

A journey from brooding despair to rousing triumph, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony rescued him from the grips of official Soviet disfavor.

Some classics from the New York Philharmonic’s storied discography.

Another packed summer of live music awaits.

David Afkham returns to the CSO podium to lead Debussy, Ravel, and Shostakovich.

We visit Lyadov’s Enchanted Lake and Swan Lake of Tchaikovsky before hearing the Symphony No. 10 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Alan Gilbert conducts.

Star pianist Stephen Hough takes the stage to perform Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.

Vladimir Jurowski conducts Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8.