I admit to having trouble with the Fourth Symphony; while I recognise it as Shostakovich’s boldest utterance I just don’t buy the revisionist view of it as his greatest masterpiece. As his most abstract and formalist work for public consumption he was wise to withdraw it as he sensed the heat rising around him, but whether his reservations during rehearsal were a factor will forever be obscured by the muddied waters of post-Volkov argument. Dare one say it was a wild phase that he needed to grow out of, and burying the work for later did everyone a favour, while distilling his language enabled him to infuse it with subversive subtext?

The work is...