RSNO 2024/25: Shostakovich Eight

Anna Clyne – Glasslands

Shostakovich – Symphony No8

Jonathon Heyward, Conductor

Jess Gillam, Saxophone

War creates lies, but it also exposes uncomfortable truths, and as the Soviet Union faced the onslaught of Nazi Germany in 1943, Shostakovich poured his feelings into a symphony on a gigantic scale. Shostakovich’s Eighth is music forged from blood, fire and steel – colossal, uncompromising, and so powerful that after the war the authorities banned it. Jonathon Heyward conducts and joins an RSNO favourite – saxophonist Jess Gillam – in a thriller from Anna Clyne: an Irish legend of banshees and night terrors, told in music like you’ve never heard.