Shostakovich’s Symphony No.2 was written in 1927 to fulfil a state commission to mark the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The composer opens the compact 20-minute work with a purely instrumental first section followed by a musical setting of Alexander Bezymensky’s poem To October, a hymn of praise to Lenin and the revolution. While avant-garde and modernist traits prevail in the first section, the choral finale features a conventional, almost placating tonal language that emphas...