The Fourth Symphony by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich is both a memorial to the brutal Stalin era and a self-portrait. In this video, Maestro Sir Simon Rattle and the musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra perform the work with the utmost attention to detail. The concert took place on February 29, 2024 at the Barbican Centre in London.
(00:00) I. Allegretto, poco moderato – Presto – Tempo uno
(28:14) II. Moderato, con moto
(37:28) III. Largo – Allegro
Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony holds a special place in his oeuvre. It followed the huge success of his First Symphony, which he wrote in 1925 when he was only 19, and which brought him global recognition, and the more conformist, decorative Second and Third Symphonies (titled respectively "To October" and "First of May"). For his Fourth Symphony, the 28-year-old composer set about creating a mature work, aiming for it to be in the spirit of his great predecessors Beethoven and, above all, Mahler. "This will be a monumental work of great ideas and great passions," the composer confidently stated in a 1935 interview in "Pravda," the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
He completed the symphony in 1936, at the age of 29. Its premiere, scheduled for December 30, was eagerly anticipated both within the Soviet Union and abroad, as Shostakovich was by then an internationally acclaimed composer. Fritz Stiedry was set to conduct the Leningrad Philharmonic, and Otto Klemperer had already secured the rights for the German premiere, planned for January 1, 1937.
However, the premiere never took place. Only weeks before the scheduled performance, Shostakovich abruptly withdrew the symphony. Officially, he offered vague doubts about the work’s artistic quality, but the real reason was far more perilous: in the tense political climate of 1936, the symphony’s fiercely modernist style and uncompromising tone exposed him to serious danger. Earlier that year, he had already been targeted in a vicious public campaign after Stalin attended — and disliked — a performance of his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk." He reportedly called it "silly stuff, not music." Soon afterward, "Pravda" denounced the work and Shostakovich suddenly found himself out of favor.
Meanwhile, the broader atmosphere in the Soviet Union had grown increasingly dark and threatening. The country stood on the brink of the Great Terror. Between 1937 and 1938, the NKVD arrested an estimated 1.7 million people, and more than 700,000 were executed, among them many leading artists and intellectuals. It was a time when Shostakovich himself lived in constant fear, expecting arrest at any moment. He was said to carry a small suitcase with him containing everything he would need for his first few days in prison.
It was not until 1961 that the Fourth Symphony finally premiered in Moscow, where it was immediately recognized as a powerful documentation of the repression of the Stalinist regime. The funeral march that begins the third and final movement was perceived as a requiem for the victims — who included numerous friends and some of his family members, including his brother-in-law and his mother-in-law, astronomer Sofya Varsar.
"Art is the cry of distress uttered by those who experience at first hand the fate of mankind." – this statement by Arnold Schoenberg applies to Shostakovich and his Fourth Symphony.
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