Shostakovich - Scottish Ensemble - BBC Music Magazine

Doubtless Barshai's arrangement of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 - renamed Chamber Symphony - has its advocates: those who prefer the luxuriance of a string orchestra to the intimate but stark lines of the original quartet. Linn's fine recording of the 12 crack players of the BT Scottish Ensemble provides the best of both worlds, a successful hybrid that can project the raw energy of the Allegro molto, for instance, more effectively than the bigger forces of the Vienna Philarmonic with Jansons on EMI.