Better Not Let Stalin Hear This

A live recording from the BBC Proms features on this BBC Music mag cover mount disk by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Vassily Sinaisky. The work is Shostakovich's Symphony No 4. This is the only recording of the fourth symphony that I have but despite being a freebie, it is of a good standard. Being a Shostakovich symphony there is, of course, a story attached. This is the symphony that he was writing at the time of the criticism of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk with all the dangers that posed. Shostakovich therefore withdrew it and set about the fifth symphony instead, his response to justified criticism or whatever the phrase was. The implication was that the fourth symphony was anti Soviet realism, Shostakovich himself said it suffered from "grandiosomania". It didn't surface until the relative safety of the early sixties, by which time it didn't sound in any way outrageous nor particularly grandiose. It is lengthy and it does need a large orchestra but it is full of musical invention and overwhelming musical force. What was clear, however, was the tragic message implied and it seems fair to say that the Stalinist authorities of the thirties would also have picked up on this with fatal results. Ranking Shostakovich's symphonies in terms of worth isn't the most meaningful exercise but the fourth is one of those that is right up there and as a "lost child" it held particular sugnificance for the composer himself towards the end of his life.