'It is not you who are under my influence, but I who am under yours,' wrote Shostakovich to Ustvolskaya. Certainly, though their music shares sorrow, grotesquerie and violence, Ustvolskaya has a vision all her own. The Octet appears to be an obsessive rite; violins worry over the same narrow range of notes, and cower before the relentless timpanic beating. Leiferkus’s speaking voice provides the only real music in the arid Symphony. Welcome to the Gulag. Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, spare as it is, arrives like a shower of delightful opulence.

-- Helen Wallace, BBC Music Magazine