This all-Shostakovich concert featured Vladimir Ashkenazy in his element, conducting a symphony in which he has an impressive pedigree: a 1988 recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and a 2001 live performance (strangely not released until 2008) with the Philharmonic in Tokyo – both widely praised.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 is one of the few 20th-century symphonies to enter the mainstream repertoire to become a fully-fledged “classic”. Its emotional and tonal ambiguity, especially in the final movement, has seen forests consumed in publications “explaining” it. The Fifth Symphony is certainly an expression of expiation after the composer’s sudden fall from grace when Stalin saw his successful opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and condemned it, although the Symphony’s sycophantic sub-title, A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism, wasn’t Shostakovich’s.

It was good programming for the concert to begin with the Passacaglia from the offending opera, a grim interlude which largely belies the lurid eroticism and cartoonish grand guignol violence which so disturbed Stalin. (He may have killed millions but his heart remained with The Merry Widow). Despite slower tempi than previously, the performance never seemed to drag. The SSO responded magnificently to its former Chief Conductor and the sustained intensity in the...