TRACKLISTING

Symphony No.4 in C minor, op.43
1 I Allegretto poco moderato —
2 Presto
3 II Moderato con moto
4 III Largo —
5 Allegro —
6 [Allegro]

Kirov Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg
Valery Gergiev

RECORDING INFORMATION

Also available on SACD.

Valery Gergiev - today's outstanding champion of the music of Shostakovich - leads the Kirov orchestra in a blazing account of the first of the War Symphonies.

"...a white hot score bursting with invention and passion..."
from the album booklet note

"...the cruel struggle between the human and the blind, and mechanically inhuman which stands opposed to it."
from a review of the first performance in 1961

Begun in September 1935 Shostakovich's 4th Symphony was to be a crucial turning point - both in his life and his music.

During it's composition Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and did not like it. Two days later Pravda published a harsh attack on the opera, followed by a savage attack on Shostakovich's new ballet score The Limpid Stream. The message was clear that composers would now be expected to follow the party line.

The planned first performance of the 4th Symphony by the Leningrad Philharmonic did not take place, and it was not until 1961 that Kondrashin conducted a reconstructed account of the lost symphony in Moscow.