When a symphony by a famous composer is never played there is usually a good reason. I think we spotted at least three when the Hallé Orchestra, Hallé Choir, RNCM Chorus and Mark Elder bravely tackled Shostakovich’s Third on Thursday.

First, there’s the bombastic choral finale, conjuring the spectacle of proud proletariats uniting on May Day. It’s, well, very Soviet — “The first of May is the tread of miners clutching rifles. Revolution!” — without any of the redeeming irony that the older Shostakovich might have surreptitiously laced into this gaudy patriotic banner.

Then there’s the ferocious technical demands. In 1929 Shostakovich was a young man aiming for maximum shock impact. It’s hard to know which is the more hazardous for the first fiddles: the helter-skelter passage where they have to pump out about a hundred notes a second, or the anguished, Mahlerian line that sends them on a weird chromatic journey into the stratosphere.

And lastly, there’s the music itself: noisily entertaining, but bereft of discernible logic. Just before the chorus enters, for instance, there are massive unison declamations for full orchestra over a mighty drum-roll, followed by a macabre recitative for trombones. What’s that about? All credit to the Hallé and Elder for putting it across with such pulsating vigour. But I won’t be petitioning the gods of concert programming for more performances.

Shostakovich’s Ninth is no less mystifying in places, but far more persuasively constructed. In 1945 he was expected to celebrate victory with something big and rousing. Instead he irked his Soviet paymasters (and probably triggered their public denunciation of him three years later) by producing this superficially bubbly but deeply sardonic work. It’s short — but not short on substance or drama. The Hallé and Elder made a pungent case for its being played more regularly.

Manchester’s superb Shostakovich celebration has been notable for its intelligent cross-references to other composers. Here we opened with Stravinsky’s Scherzo à la Russe — a reminder that the two great 20th-century Russian composers, the one who left and the one who stayed, did once meet each other. And, in a nod to Shostakovich’s affinity with Mahler, we also heard the latter’s Kindertotenlieder, sung with feeling by Mark Stone but nothing like enough gravitas or control.