Donald Macleod explores Shostakovich's brilliant youth - and the work of five extraordinary lost musical souls - amidst the turmoil and extraordinary originality of 1920s Russia.

Wednesday's programme features Shostakovich at his zaniest - and perhaps most brilliantly original. After two scurrilous arrangements of Scarlatti, Donald Macleod presents excerpts from Shostakovich's first opera, "The Nose", a surreal tale of nasal amputation and Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

The programme finishes with a masterpiece not by Shostakovich, but by his contemporary Alexander Mosolov - a man who would later be the only major composer to be sent to the gulag. Mosolov's Piano Concerto no.1 is like no other in classical music - a bewildering procession of melodies and influences that mirrors the chaotic artistic melting-pot of 1920s Soviet Russia. Show less