Lose your doubts about M/C sound

[Feanor]

Loose your doubts about the veracity of multi-channel sound ...

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5
~ Micheal Tilson Thomas & San Francisco Synphony on SFS/BBC Blu-ray (See Amazon HERE)

There is no surround gimmickry here. The recording was made live before a Proms concert audience in 2007 in the Royal Albert Hall ... and you are there. The delivery medium is Dolby Digital TrueHD on Blu-ray. I hear no "harshness" or other digital nasties -- if you do, maybe it's because you don't know what a live orchestra actually sounds like.

Accompaning the music is synchronized video of the performance that features close ups of the conductor and orchestra members. This is extremely well done but I find it distracting. For one thing, while you see picture of a performer a few feet away, but the perspective of the music remains that of a good seat in the orchestra section, (and thank goodness for that). Also included separately is Tilson Thomas' excellent background on Shostakovich and the his Fifth Symphony which was composed in response to the pseudo-esthetic criticisms of the Soviet regime.

It so happens that Shostakovich's No. 5 is probably my favorite "fifth". Shostie's music here, as typical of him, is easily accessible modern classical, not terribly complex but with exquisite expressive nuance.