Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10

Shostakovich wrote his First Symphony at eighteen and nineteen as his graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatory. The premiere under Nikolai Malko in May 1926 made the teenager famous almost overnight. Its four compact movements already carry his fingerprints: a wry march, a circus-tinged scherzo with a prominent piano part, a darkly lyrical slow movement, and a finale famously pivoting on a solo timpani passage. Few symphonic debuts announce a voice this clearly.

• Bernstein / Chicago Symphony Orchestra

  Reference

  Deutsche Grammophon · 1988

  Bernstein conducts a nineteen-year-old's graduation piece as though it were a mature symphony, and neither the scherzo's edge nor the finale's timpani are softened. A safe first encounter.

• Haitink / London Philharmonic Orchestra

  Modern

  Decca · 1978

  Haitink resists reading the young Shostakovich backwards from the later symphonies. Steady tempi, clear textures, and you can hear the lightness the war had not yet crushed.