Symphony No. 4

Symphony No 4
Op. 43

 

  The Fourth Symphony was written in 1935-1936.1 Its premiere was scheduled for 11 December 1936.
The rehearsals began under the supervision of Fritz Stiedry, who directed the Symphonic Orchestra of the Leningrad Philharmonic at that time. But after two rehearsals, Shostakovich removed the symphony from the repertoire.

  For a long time, biographers were sure that he did this of his own initiative, that it was evidence of the composer’s high level of self-criticism and stringent demands on himself, or they interpreted it as a manifestation of self-preservation: “the author cancelled the premiere after deciding that it would not be appropriate just now”; “I did not want to risk it”; due to the mass and uncommonly severe criticism of his creative work, “Shostakovich, in the grips of fearful panic, decided not to put up any kind of resistance”.

  In reality, however, the symphony was removed from the repertoire under direct and crude pressure from the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Russia Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The composer himself endowed this premiere with immense and major significance. “Under the conditions of harsh persecution, the decision to perform the Fourth was essentially the only form of protest accessible to the composer, his last challenge to the current circumstances and fate. Shostakovich took the plunge. He went to the rehearsals and told his friends in Moscow that the premiere was about to take place.
…Nevertheless, rumours that the formalist composer was preparing for the premiere filtered beyond the music world… Director of the Leningrad Philharmonic Isai Renzin invited Shostakovich to come and see him and asked him to abandon the idea of putting on the premiere, explaining this by the city leadership’s displeasure and the clouds gathering over the philharmonic: ‘If you do not feel sorry for yourself, at least feel some sympathy for us,’ said Renzin. Now it was not only his own fate that hung in the balance. Shostakovich could not risk the lives of other people.”6 Isaak Glikman, who accompanied Shostakovich after his visit to the director, recalls: “He said in an even, flat voice with hardly any intonation that the symphony would not be performed, that it had been removed from the repertoire on Renzin’s insistence, who, not wishing to resort to administrative measures, had asked the author to remove the symphony from the repertoire himself.
  The feeling of anticipation about the unperformed premiere remained with the composer for decades. He continued to show the symphony in its piano arrangement to friends and colleagues.
  In 1960, while working on his autobiographical Eighth Quartet, Shostakovich included the main theme of the finale of the Fourth Symphony in its original version. A year later, the symphony was finally performed.
  The initiative for performing the symphony at the turn of the 1950s-1960s came from Moses Grinberg. “The leadership of the Moscow Philharmonic in the person of its artistic director Moses Grinberg asked me to take a look at Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony and say whether I thought it worth reviving and whether I would take this responsibility upon myself,” recalled conductor Kirill Kondrashin. “Dmitri Shostakovich himself still did not know of this intention. The author’s score of this symphony had not been preserved. The only copy of the score restored by B.G. Shalman in keeping with the orchestra parts was in Leningrad. I only had the arrangement for two pianos.”
  The conductor went to see Shostakovich for permission and advice. Shostakovich did not immediately give his consent. “So many years have passed, I have forgotten a great deal, and I have lost the score. Leave me the arrangement, I will take a look at it, come and see me again the day after tomorrow and we will decide whether it is worth playing this composition or whether it should be rewritten… I showed up at the appointed time,” Kondrashin goes on to relate, “and Dmitri Shostakovich, returning me the piano score, said, ‘You can play it. I will phone Leningrad and you will be sent the score. Nothing needs to be rewritten. This symphony still has something dear to me.’
  The premiere of the Fourth Symphony was held on 30 December 1961 in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Kondrashin conducted the orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic. The premiere was a huge and triumphal success and aroused an enraptured furore in the press. On 20 and 24 January 1962, the symphony was repeated (with the same conductor and in the same hall). “At home after the concert that had been such a resounding success,” recalled Glikman, “Dmitri Dmitrievich said, still under the effect of what he had heard, ‘It seems to me that in many respects the Fourth is better than my most recent symphonies.’ ”