colm Sargent conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The symphony was conceived as a popular piece and proved an instant success in Russia?his greatest, in fact, since the Leningrad Symphony fifteen years earlier. The work's popular success, as well as its earning him a Lenin Prize in April 1958, marked the composer's formal rehabilitation from the Zhdanov Doctrine of 1948. On this new release, the BBC Philharmonic brilliantly interprets the work under the baton of John Storgards.