Dmitri Shostakovich: The Golden Age (Complete Ballet) - Gennady Rozhdestvensky
This great work has a wacky and complicated plot that involves a Soviet  athletic team's adventures in the decadent and capitalistic West. Musically, the  Western locale offered the composer a chance to indulge his enjoyment of Jazz  and other "bourgeois" art forms, and you get the distinct impression that it's  the naughty bits that interested the composer most. When Stalin saw  Shostakovich's third ballet,The Limpid Stream, and condemned his music,  all three of his dance works disappeared from sight without a trace. The  composer never wrote another. It wasn't until a few years ago that Gennadi  Rozhdestvensky revived the work in its complete form, and this magnificent  recording is the result.--David Hurwitz