Shostakovich Symphony No. 10

[JJack]

Nice to hear people appreciate our longtime conductor of the DSO, Neeme Jarvi.

I did the Shostakovich 13 with him in 1999. I've sung with the DSO many times, and Neeme is the nicest man, but there was fire in his eyes when we did the 13th. We were joined by the Estonian mens national chorus, and, well, let's just say that Shostakovich has a deep meaning to those men.

Incredibly moving and one of the great experiences of my life in any arena.

[MartinT]

When I was in the Soviet Union in 1985 I found the Melodiya record store in Nevsky Prospect in Leningrad (as it was then named). You could not browse! There was a big counter and you had to ask a nice Russian girl for the records you wanted, which she then duly went and pulled from the expansive storage area.

Sad to report, having just returned from St Petersburg, that the Melodiya store is no longer there. I hadn't really expected the record label store of the Soviets to still exist, but I still looked for it in vain. Nevsky Prospect is a fantastic street, full of all manner of shops (and more coffee shops than you could believe) and just a wonderful place to be. Sitting in a coffee shop and watching the world go by, their women put ours to shame. Their level of fashionable dress sense is high and there are so many slim, gorgeous young Russian women that I was quite taken aback. Luckily, so was Ruth so at least I didn't get elbowed for ogling. However, it is not rich in music shops. The best I could do was a musical instrument store that had CDs in rotating displays in the centre of the floor space. There I bought a disc of Shostakovich film and theatre scores, but that was all.

More successful were three discs of Russian folk and church acapella singing, quite staggeringly beautiful and very well recorded, bought in Yaroslavl.