Symphony No.

4 (Shostakovich)
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Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Opus 43, between September
1935 and May 1936, after abandoning some preliminary sketch material. In January 1936,
halfway through this period, Pravda—under direct orders from Joseph Stalin[1]—published an
editorial "Muddle Instead of Music" that denounced the composer and targeted his opera Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk. Despite this attack, and despite the oppressive political climate of the time,
Shostakovich completed the symphony and planned its premiere for December 1936 in
Leningrad. After rehearsals began, the orchestra's management cancelled the performance,
offering a statement that Shostakovich had withdrawn the work. He may have agreed to
withdraw it to relieve orchestra officials of responsibility. The symphony was premiered on 30
December 1961 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra led by Kirill Kondrashin.

Contents
 1 Instrumentation and structure
 2 Historical overview
o 2.1 Composition
o 2.2 Withdrawal
o 2.3 Premiere
 3 Influence of Mahler
 4 Recordings
 5 References
 6 Bibliography

Instrumentation and structure[edit]

Shostakovich uses an immense orchestra in this work, requiring well over one hundred
musicians. This, combined with the extreme technical and emotional demands placed on the
performers, makes the Symphony No. 4 one of his least-performed scores, yet it ranks as one of
his most important and personal works.[citation needed]

It is scored for the following instruments:[2]

Woodwind Brass
2 Piccolos 8 Horns
4 Flutes 4 Trumpets
4 Oboes (4th doubling on Cor anglais) 3 Trombones
1 E-flat clarinet 2 Tubas
 4 Clarinets Percussion
1 Bass clarinet 6 Timpani (two players)
3 Bassoons Bass drum
1 Contrabassoon Snare drum
Strings Cymbals (crash and suspended)
2 Harps Triangle
16–20 1st Violins Wood block
14–18 2nd Violins Castanets
12–16 Violas Tam-tam
12–16 cellos Xylophone
10–14 Double basses Glockenspiel
Keyboard
Celesta

The symphony is made up of three movements:

I. Allegretto poco moderato - Presto

II. Moderato con moto
III. Largo - Allegro

Historical overview[edit]
Composition[edit]

Shostakovich began the Fourth Symphony in September 1935. His second and third symphonies,
completed in 1927 and 1929, had been patriotic works with choral finales, but the new score was
different. Toward the end of 1935 he told an interviewer, "I am not afraid of difficulties. It is
perhaps easier, and certainly safer, to follow a beaten path, but it is also dull, uninteresting and
futile."[3]

Shostakovich abandoned sketches for the symphony some months earlier and began anew. On 28
January 1936, when he was about halfway through work on the symphony, Pravda printed an
unsigned editorial entitled "Muddle Instead of Music," which singled out his internationally
successful opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for particularly savage condemnation. The fact that
the editorial was unsigned indicated that it represented the official Party position. Rumors
circulated for a long time that Stalin had directly ordered this attack after he attended a
performance of the opera and stormed out after the first act.[4]

Pravda published two more articles in the same vein in the next two and a half weeks. On 3
February, "Ballet Falsehood" assailed his ballet The Limpid Stream, and "Clear and Simple
Language in Art" appeared on 13 February. Although this last article was technically an editorial
attacking Shostakovich for "formalism", it appeared in the "Press Review" section. Stalin, under
cover of the Central Committee, may have singled out Shostakovich because the plot and music
of Lady Macbeth infuriated him, the opera contradicted Stalin's intended social and cultural
direction for the nation at that period, or he resented the recognition Shostakovich was receiving
both in the Soviet Union and in the West.[5]
Despite these criticisms, Shostakovich continued work on the symphony—though he
simultaneously refused to allow a concert performance of the last act of Lady Macbeth.[6] He
explained to a friend, "The audience, of course, will applaud—it's considered bon ton to be in the
opposition, and then there'll be another article with a headline like 'Incorrigible Formalist.'"[7]

Once he completed the score, Shostakovich was apparently uncertain how to proceed. His new
symphony did not emulate the style of Nikolai Myaskovsky's socialist realist Sixteenth
Symphony, The Aviators, or Vissarion Shebalin's song-symphony The Heroes of Perekop, and
contained nothing placatory at all in it, having been conceived before the Pravda attacks.
Showing the new symphony to friends did not help. One asked, frightened, what Shostakovich
thought the reaction from Pravda would be. Shostakovich jumped up from the piano, scowling,
replying sharply, "I don't write for Pravda, but for myself."[8]

Despite the increasingly repressive political atmosphere, Shostakovich continued to plan for the
symphony's premiere, scheduled by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra for 11 December
1936 under the orchestra's music director, Fritz Stiedry, a Viennese musician active in the Soviet
Union since 1933.[1] The composer also played the score on piano for Otto Klemperer, who
responded enthusiastically and planned to conduct the symphony's first performance outside the
USSR.

Withdrawal[edit]

After a number of rehearsals that left both the conductor and musicians unenthusiastic,
Shostakovich met with several officials of the Composers Union and the Communist Party, along
with I.M. Renzin, the Philharmonic's director, in the latter's office. He was informed that the 11
December performance was being cancelled and that he was expected to make the announcement
and provide an explanation. The composer's direct participation is unknown, but the newspaper
Soviet Art (Sovetskoe iskusstvo) published a notice that Shostakovich had asked for the
symphony's premiere to be cancelled "on the grounds that it in no way corresponds to his current
creative convictions and represents for him a long-outdated creative phase", that it suffered from
"grandiosomania" and he planned to revise it.[9]

Decades later, Isaak Glikman, who was Shostakovich's personal secretary in the 1930s and a
close friend, provided a different account. He wrote that party officials exerted pressure on
Renzin to cancel the scheduled performance, and Renzin, reluctant to take responsibility for the
programming decision himself, instead privately persuaded Shostakovich to withdraw the
symphony.[10]

Premiere[edit]

The manuscript score for the Fourth Symphony was lost during World War II. Using the
orchestral parts that survived from the 1936 rehearsals, Shostakovich had a two-piano version
published in an edition of 300 copies in Moscow in 1946. Shostakovich began considering a
performance only after Stalin's death in 1953 changed the cultural climate in the Soviet Union.
He undertook no revisions. Conductor Kirill Kondrashin led the premiere of the orchestral
version on 30 December 1961 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.[11] The first
performance outside the USSR took place at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival with the Philharmonia
Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Soviet critics were excited at the prospect of finding a major missing link in Shostakovich's
creative output, yet refrained from value-laden comparisons. They generally placed the Fourth
Symphony firmly in its chronological context and explored its significance as a way-station on
the road to the more conventional Fifth Symphony. Western critics were more overtly
judgmental, especially since the Fourth was premiered back-to-back with the Twelfth Symphony
in Edinburgh. The critical success of the Fourth juxtaposed with the critical disdain for the
Twelfth led to speculation that Shostakovich's creative powers were on the wane.[12]

Influence of Mahler[edit]
The symphony is strongly influenced by Gustav Mahler, whose music Shostakovich had been
closely studying with Ivan Sollertinsky during the preceding ten years. (Friends remembered
seeing Mahler's Seventh Symphony on Shostakovich's piano at that time.) The duration, the size
of the orchestra, the style and range of orchestration, and the recurrent use of "banal" melodic
material juxtaposed with more high-minded, even "intellectual," material, all come from
Mahler.[13]

Aside from the entire second movement, one of the most Mahlerian moments appears at the
outset of the third movement—a funeral march reminiscent of many similar passages in the
Austrian's output. Another such point occurs near the beginning of the deeply brooding coda that
follows the last full-orchestra outburst, with the descending half-step idea in the woodwinds
clearly pointing to the A Major-to-A minor chord progression that characterizes much of
Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

Recordings[edit]
Orchestra Conductor Record Company Year of Recording F
Moscow Philharmonic
Kirill Kondrashin Melodiya/Aulos (see ref. below)*
Orchestra
Moscow Philharmonic
Kirill Kondrashin Melodiya 1962 (Recording)
Orchestra
Philharmonia Orchestra Gennady Rozhdestvensky BBC Legends 1962(1)
Moscow Philharmonic 1966 (Recording included in
Kirill Kondrashin Melodiya
Orchestra the Complete Symphonies)
Columbia/Sony LP (C
Philadelphia Orchestra Eugene Ormandy 1963(4)
Classical CD
Royal Concertgebouw
Kirill Kondrashin RCO Live 1971
Orchestra
Chicago Symphony
André Previn EMI Classics 1977
Orchestra
 Medici
BBC Symphony Orchestra Gennady Rozhdestvensky 1978
Arts/Euroarts
London Philharmonic
Bernard Haitink Decca Records 1979
Orchestra
Slovak Radio Symphony
Ladislav Slovák Naxos Records 1988
Orchestra
Royal Philharmonic
Vladimir Ashkenazy Decca Records 1989
Orchestra
Scottish National
Neeme Jarvi Chandos 1989
Orchestra
St. Louis Symphony RCA Victor Red
Leonard Slatkin 1989
Orchestra Seal
National Symphony
Mstislav Rostropovich Teldec 1992(2)
Orchestra
City of Birmingham
Sir Simon Rattle EMI Classics 1994
Symphony Orchestra
Deutsche
Philadelphia Orchestra Myung-Whun Chung 1994
Grammophon
Prague Symphony
Maxim Shostakovich Supraphon 1998(3)
Orchestra
London Symphony
Mstislav Rostropovich Andante 1998(2)
Orchestra
BBC Music
BBC Philharmonic Vassily Sinaisky 2000
Magazine
Kirov Orchestra Valery Gergiev Philips Classics 2001
Cologne Radio Symphony
Rudolf Barshai Brilliant Classics 2001
Orchestra
Bavarian Radio Symphony
Mariss Jansons EMI Classics 2004
Orchestra
Orchestra Sinfonica di
Oleg Caetani ARTS music 2004
Milano Giuseppe Verdi
NHK Symphony Orchestra Vladimir Ashkenazy Decca Records 2006
WDR Symphony
Semyon Bychkov Avie
Orchestra, Cologne
Stuttgart Radio Symphony
Andrey Boreyko Hänssler Classic 2006
Orchestra
Chicago Symphony
Bernard Haitink CSO Resound 2008
Orchestra
Netherlands Radio
Mark Wigglesworth BIS Records 2009
Philharmonic Orchestra
National Symphony
Lu Shao-chia NSO Live 2011
Orchestra (Taiwan)
 Deutsche
Los Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen 2012
Grammophon
Royal Liverpool
Vasily Petrenko Naxos Records 2013
Philharmonic Orchestra
Mariinsky Orchestra Valery Gergiev Mariinsky 2014
Rotterdam Philharmonic Deutsche
Yannick Nézet-Séguin 2016
Orchestra Grammophon
Boston Symphony Deutsche
Andris Nelsons 2018
Orchestra Grammophon
Maki Namekawa and
two-piano version Supertrain Records 2019
Dennis Russell Davies

* = the first recording, made by the performers who gave the premiere
(1)
= aircheck of the western premiere, 1962 Edinburgh Festival
(2)
= the first and second of two recordings made by the composer's close friend and colleague
(3)
= the only recording made by the composer's son
(4)
= the first Western studio recording
Source: arkivmusic.com (recommended recordings selected based on critics reviews)

The 1998 recording by the LPO and Rostropovich, and the 2004 recording conducted by Caetano
include performances of the surviving original sketches of the Fourth Symphony's first
movement.[14][15]

 Rustem Hayroudinoff and Colin Stone (Chandos; first recording of the 1940s two-piano
reduction)

References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to: a b Steinberg, 541.
2. ^ Shostakovich, Dmitri. Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43. New York: Kalmus.
3. ^ Freed, 3.
4. ^ Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, pp. ??
5. ^ Volkov, Shostakovich and Stalin, 110.
6. ^ Volkov, Shostakovich and Stalin, 121.
7. ^ Muzykal'naia akademiia, 4 (1997), 72.
8. ^ Muzykal'naia akademiia, 4 (1997), 74.
9. ^ Robinson, Harlow. "Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Opus 43"
(PDF). Boston Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
10. ^ Isaak Glikman, Story of a Friendship, xxii–xxiv. Glikman wrote elsewhere that "a
mythology has grown up around the withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony, a mythology to
which writings about Shostakovich have unfortunately lent quasi-scriptural status."
Glikman, Isaak (2001) Story of a Friendship (trans. Anthony Phillips), p. xxii, Faber
11. ^ MacDonald, 108, 108n1
12. ^ Fay, 226.
13. ^ Volkov, Shostakovich and Stalin, 136.
 14. ^ https://www.discogs.com/Rostropovich-conducts-Shostakovich-London-Symphony-
Orchestra-Shostakovich-Festival-1998/release/9573880
15. ^
http://www.artsmusic.de/Symphony_No4_including_fragments_of_the_unpublished_mo
vement/topic/sacd/shop_art_id/344/tpl/artsmusic_article_detail

Bibliography[edit]
 Fairclough, Pauline, A Soviet Credo: Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (Aldershot:
Ashgate Publishing, 2006) ISBN 978-0-7546-5016-4.
 Fay, Laurel E. Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2000). ISBN 978-0-19-518251-4.
 Freed, Richard, Notes for RCA/BMG 60887: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4; St. Louis
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin.
 Glikman, Isaak D., tr. Anthony Phillips, Story of a Friendship (London: Faber & Faber,
2001). ISBN 978-0-571-20982-8.
 Layton, Robert, ed. Robert Simpson, The Symphony: Volume 2, Mahler to the Present
Day (New York: Drake Publishing, Inc., 1972).
 Leonard, James, All Music Guide to Classical Music (San Francisco: Backbeat books,
2005). ISBN 978-0-87930-865-0.
 Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music:
From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of
California Press, 2002). ISBN 978-0-520-21815-4.
 Schwarz, Boris, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia: Enlarged Edition, 1917–1981
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). ISBN 978-0-253-33956-0.
 Spencer, William (1985). The Fourth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich: an analysis
(M.M. thesis). Boston: Boston University.
 Steinberg, Michael, The Symphony (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1995). ISBN 978-0-19-506177-2.
 Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary
Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2004). ISBN 978-0-375-41082-6.
 Wilson, Elizabeth, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, Second Edition (Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994, 2006). ISBN 978-0-691-12886-3.