Classical home listening: Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony; Riot Ensemble’s Vestige

Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. The Russian composer dedicated his 14th Symphony to Britten three years later. RIA Novosti Photograph: RIA Novosti

• Scored for a chamber-sized orchestra of strings and percussion, and two solo voices, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14 (1969) is cogent, affecting, beautiful, but also raw and short on consolation. A welcome new recording (Chandos) from the BBC Philharmonic, with chief conductor John Storgårds and soprano Elizabeth Atherton and bass Peter Rose as excellent soloists, is part of their ongoing series of the composer’s late works. With its settings of poems (in Russian) about death, by Apollinaire, Rilke, Lorca and others, the work has more the feel of an oratorio: melancholy and exploratory. Shostakovich dedicated it to his friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted the first UK performance in 1970 at his Aldeburgh festival.