Los Angeles Philharmonic/ Esa-Pekka Salonen Deutsche Grammophon 479 0249 (2 CDs) ****

How do you trump Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony – a work kept from performance for 25 years – on disc? Answer: couple it with the Prologue of the 1932 unfinished satirical opera, Orango, unknown until musicologist Olga Digonskaya discovered it in piano score in 2004. It deals with a half-man/half ape who falls from being a Western press baron to an attraction in a Soviet circus. The music finds Shostakovich in hi-jinks, popular mode, and it's not known why the project, intended for the Bolshoi Theatre, stalled. It benefits from a strong cast and the LA Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen, with colourful orchestration by Gerard McBurney. Salonen's approach to the sprawling and often shocking symphony is interestingly reserved, as if he wants to relate it to the more restrained style of the works that followed it. url.ie/57as