The Shostakovich Centenary Concert was always going to be a highlight of this year's Brighton Festival.
It was a concert full of stars, including conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, the two soloists, pianist Steven Osborne and cellist Steven Isserlis.
And the Philharmonia Orchestra is on the top of its game at the moment.
Dimitri Shostakovich, who died in 1975, was the greatest Soviet composer of the 20th Century, if not the greatest composer to ever come out of Russia.
Ashkenazy, probably the most modest of all the "star" conductors, opened with an exciting and energetic reading of the Festival Overture, written for the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution. And Steven Osborne continued the energy with a stunning reading of the Second Piano Concerto.
Isserlis was equally powerful in the fiendishly difficult First Cello Concerto.
The final piece was Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, his third wartime symphony, which was supposed to be monumental but which is in reality quite light-hearted.
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