Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 in C minor op. 43 was performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov in September 2005 in the Cologne Philharmonic Hall.
Historical recording from the WDR Klassik-Archiv.
00:00:00 I. Moderato
00:23:09 II. Allegro
00:27:22 III. Allegretto
00:39:44 IV. Andante Ð Allegro
Hans Hadulla, director
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○ Introduction to the work
Probably only a few composers have been under the observation of politics and the public as much as Dmitri Shostakovich. After Stalin recognized the potential of his music and sought to harness it for his own purposes, the composer was under strict control of the Communist Party and the Composers' Union of the USSR. Shostakovich's psyche and constitution suffered greatly from this. Since Stalin's purge policy did not spare even well-known persons such as his friend, the director Meyerhold, he was plagued by fear of persecution from the mid-1930s. Shostakovich, who waits night after night with a packed suitcase next to the elevator of his Leningrad apartment for his arrest by the secret police - this is how Julian Barnes described it a few years ago in his touching book "The Noise of Time".
Shostakovich was twice massively criticized and publicly denounced by the party. For the first time in January 1936 the "Pravda" took over with the scathing article "Chaos instead of Music". This verse, probably written and launched by Stalin himself, about the hitherto successful opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" amounted to a complete performance ban. Under these circumstances, it was impossible to think of the premiere of the 4th Symphony, on which Shostakovich had been working since 1935. So the composer withdrew it as a precaution. The premiere took place only 25 years later on December 30, 1961 in Moscow.
Dmitri Shostakovich is considered an important figure in Soviet Russian music history and an outstanding symphonic composer of the 20th century (after Mahler). His 4th Symphony is special in many respects: in the impressive orchestral strength with over 100 participants and because of its experimental sound language and individual form. Two extended corner movements, as it were two wild and eccentric streams of thoughts, confront the listener*with a world that has undoubtedly gone off the rails. In the confrontation with brutal machine sounds (Stalinist terror ?), the human element threatens to be lost in the first movement or banal everyday noise (third movement). Krzysztof Meyer, friend and biographer of the composer, describes the 4th Symphony as "one of the most shocking and tragic works of Shostakovich".
4 июл 2024
