Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14 is a hard nut to crack, and I admit it’s a long way from my comfort zone. It’s like an ugly descendent of Mahler’s Song of the Earth – without the charm or poignant nostalgia. “When you’re dead, you’re dead” is the message. No regret, no sentiment. The 11 poems are by Rilke, Lorca and Apollinaire, who all died tragically young.

No one does bleakness like Shostakovich, but this work is somber and death-suffused even by his standards. Parts of it make the Fourth Symphony sound like Offenbach! Even the poems are bizarre: one starts with the words, “Look, Madame, you’ve dropped something. It’s my heart”. It’s pretty off-the-wall stuff.

Petrenko’s penultimate addition to his highly impressive Shostakovich cycle, which more than anything else, has cemented his reputation as ‘one to watch’, is certainly masterful. His Liverpool band is pared back to chamber-like proportions of strings and percussion (much fewer, I imagine, than Rattle’s luxuriant Berlin forces) and establish and maintain an admirable spareness of tone.

The singers, Alexander Vinogradov, a genuine Russian bass, with all the vocal resources that implies, and Gal James (an Israeli with more than a hint of Slavic earthiness in her singing) are...