Shostakovich's Fourth is a symphony more talked about than heard. Accused of both political dissidence and aesthetic decadence during Stalin's purges, Shostakovich famously withdrew the score in 1936, only sanctioning the premiere in 1961. In later life he claimed it represented a portrait of Stalin's terror at its height and considered it one of his finest works. Listening to this performance with the BBC Symphony under Jukka-Pekka Saraste, one was tempted to agree.

The symphony's subversiveness lies less in its use of harmonic dissonance than in its equation of the Mahlerian musical language of imperial decline with totalitarian atrocity. Some conductors have presented it as a despairing elegy. Saraste's interpretation was all fury and anguish, though occasionally he sacrificed homogeneity to immediate impact. The opening march, all vicious brass and screaming woodwind, was crushing in its brutality and sat uneasily with the remaining movements, with their intimations of assertion and collapse. The final funeral march rose to heights of tremendous dignity before plunging into utter exhaustion.

The first half of the concert, consisting of Stravinsky's Scherzo Fantastique and Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, was mercifully less gruelling. Stravinsky's Scherzo was initially inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck's book The Life of the Bee, which explains its buzzing string writing. "Fantastique", however, suggests Stravinsky was also, perhaps, thinking of Berlioz, and Saraste emphasised the piece's pivotal nature, peering back to the flickering brilliance of Berlioz's Queen Mab, as well as pre-empting the pyrotechnics of Stravinsky's own Firebird.

The soloist in Ravel's Concerto, meanwhile, was Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who perfectly judged its mixture of flamboyance and depth, turning in a performance at once witty and dark, sensual and sinister. It's one of the best things Thibaudet has ever done, while the BBCSO, wonderfully responsive to Saraste throughout, haven't played this well in ages.