On the evidence of this recording Andrew Litton is a greatly gifted conductor of whom much can be expected. He manages difficult things, like the setting of the first movement's basic tempo, with great assurance, but at the same time he can press that tempo forward with such control that he never seems to hurry or to change gear awkwardly. The balancing of Shostakovich's huge tuttis is excellently done too: with everybody playing fff for pages on end there is always a risk of glaring opacity, or that one section of the orchestra (usually the brass) will obscure the others, or simply that all the climaxes, regardless of their context or function, will sound the same. Litton avoids all these hazards with exemplary skill. Best of all, perhaps, he plays the score straight, with no quirkish interpretative 'points' or ostentatious displays of virtuosity, and the orchestra respond with playing of great musicality as well as precision.
It is, though, a rather understated performance. No bad thing when, for example, the LPO horns demonstrate that they can achieve more with crisp staccato and athletic scaling of difficult high passages than others can with vociferous braying. But there is also an impression at several important points in the score of the emotional burden being delivered rather late. The climax of the first movement is just a notch or two less than overwhelming and the music that follows it, perhaps for that very reason, is not as hauntedly tragic as it can be. That Litton perceives the tragedy is eventually evident, but not for several pages. Something similar happens with the arrival of the horn's apparent message of hope in the third movement: the conflict that precedes it, between drawn anxiety and brassy assertiveness, is not quite marked enough, so the contrast introduced by the horn, the sense of an escape offered, is reduced and the expressive tension thereafter takes a while to build up. In the introduction to the finale, again, bleak bitterness becomes overt only in the nick of time, just before the transition into the Allegro; later in the movement the jarring transformation wrought by the eruption of Shostakovich's DSCH motto is also less marked than it might be.
To say that Litton's account is not in the same class as Jarvi's, Karajan's or Haitink's (Chandos, DG and Decca respectively) is, however, no dismissal but a recognition that this symphony has been exceptionally fortunate in its recent interpreters. His is a much more than respectable reading that sounds under-characterized only in this company, and I look forward to future recordings by him with interest. The sound of his version (I have heard only the LP) is outstandingly good: clear but spacious and with a splendidly rich and well-focused bass.'