The history of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 is now well known. It had been banned in 1935 by Stalin (who hadn't actually heard the piece) and surfaced 30 years later when Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded it (this is the analog transfer of that incredible first recording). It is a unwieldly work of broken rhythms and brash melodic statements. The coda, one of the most harrowing passages in all of 20th-century music, presages the Eighth Symphony and (years later) the Tenth. Ormandy's Fourth is the best on the market, and the Tenth is way up there as well. --Paul Cook