Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8 was composed within a period of only a few weeks in 1943. Its unusual formal structure, with five very unevenly balanced movements, was not the only thing to alienate the critics at first: above all, the expected triumphant final movement was missing, which would have symbolised the turning point of the on-going war after the Battle of Stalingrad. While it was officially agreed that this symphony reflected the horror of war, the conductor Kurt Sanderling, a friend of Shostakovich, said that it was a representation of the "horror of an intellectual's life at that time".

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.