Shostakovich's 14th Symphony is actually more of a song cycle, made up of settings of poems by Lorca, Rilke and others, centered around the topic of death, scored for soprano, bass and chamber orchestra augmented by a variety of percussion instruments. It's not really like anything else I've heard. The singers are excellent. Slovak' conducting is right on. The performance is mercurial, by turns impassioned, heartbreaking, spooky, angry, ironic and sardonically humorous. The sound is excellent, on heardphones or speakers. The only slight complaint about this CD is that the booklet doesn't print the actual texts of the poems, it just summarizes their contents. Every time I listen to this recording I am amazed at how good it is, and how, out of the many hundreds of recordings I have listened to and owned over the years, this is one of the few that always seems to be perfect.