The Symphony No. 4 in C Minor (Opus 43) by Dmitri Shostakovich was begun, after some preliminary sketching, in September 1935 and completed in May 1936. Halfway through its composition the composer was denounced for formalism in the infamous Pravda editorial "Chaos Instead of Music". The symphony entered rehearsals in December of 1936, almost a year after the Pravda attack, but he withdrew it before this scheduled premiere, and it sat on the shelf unplayed for 25 years. It retained its designation as his Fourth Symphony, but it was not performed until 12 December 1961, by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Kyrill Kondrashin.
The work is approximately one hour in length, and has three movements:
- Allegretto poco moderato
- Moderato con moto
- Largo - Allegretto
Shostakovich requires an immense orchestra in this work, numbering up to some 132 players. This, combined with the extreme technical and emotional demands placed on the performers, makes this among his least-performed scores, yet it ranks as among his most important and personal. He referred to this symphony as "my composer's credo" in an interview at the time he was writing it.
The symphony is strongly influenced by those of Gustav Mahler, with two long movements either side of a short central movement. There are ideas he returned to only rarely in the intervening years, such as the rapid virtuosic fugue of the first movement and the major-mode climaxes of the finale which are immediately undone as Mahler also very often did. Then the quiet bell-and-percussion strewn ending to the middle movement prefigures similar closes, those of his Cello Concerto No. 2 and Symphony No. 15, and of Vainberg's Symphony No. 5 also.
