Shostakovich's 4th Symphony 7

[neiliusful]

The last few passages of this symphony are like listening to the wind blowing through a burned out village. You can't separate the artist from his times - truly breathtaking.

[martinusB95]

This is so fantastic. Goosebumps! Thank you :)!

[benbisley]

Eerie and compelling. Thank you for uploading.

How wonderful that silence between the end and the applause.

[ottarvendel]

This sympphony was (have I read) under rehercing when the Pravda article acused som musicans for formalism. The las movement should in this case have been unschanged too. But if this is true I really do not kow. Anyhow the final is a milestone in symphonic music no doubt.

[BritinIsrael]

Brilliant Shostakovich!! Stupid and ignorant Stalin!

[Asphyyxia]

Our GCSE Music class went to listen to this piece and it was excellent, I wasn't expecting an ending quite so beautifully haunting as this. I usually listen to metal and stuff but this was like a chilling breath of fresh air.

That tune on the violin at 2:14 is just so amazing and then the celesta at 2:24 - fucking jaw dropping.

At the end of the piece there was the longest drawn out silence I had ever experienced - I think everyone was taken by the poignancy of the piece.

[EDGJZConglomerate]

absolutely love the celesta

[username14657]

So amazing! Sends chills down my spine.

[Akaki59]

This is about the finest you can get.

[LLJtbone]

This movement is so menacing sounding. The horn sets the feeling off. I can't even imagine what it must have been like during WW11?

[LLJtbone]

What I like about this part of the symphony is the horn solo and the trumpet solo. The little theme they play. Perfect 4th to dim 5th and then down chromatically. Love that lick. I'd like to know what was behind that little theme?

[beldebs]

I don't know why you are refering to WWI or even WWII, (since I didn't get what WW11 means). but this symphonny was written between 1935 and 1936 so years after WWI. this very intense and menacing climate commes I guess from the oppressive political climate (the climax of Stalin's rule) and the begining of the GREAT PURGES (these purges left 15 million dead) so it was even WORSE than WWI. so for shostakovich WWI was a joke... everyone in the CCCP was living in PURE ANXIETY...

[Akaki59]

You know he wrote this in the early 30´s.Around 34. Not the nicest time to be around.

[Musicman180]

@Akaki59 He finished the last movement just after the Pravda article in Jan '36- it's apparently a 'creative response' to being called a formalist.

[mrpossibilities]

Damn, even the conductor entered a trance at the end of this movement.

[anteupper]

Watch his right hand, silence is also music. Saw this with B. Haitink (turned 80 yesterday) in Amsterdam. Haitink simply lowered his hand ever so slowly until his baton finally rested on the score.

[frenchhousewolf]

Haunting!

[darkarchon39]

Superbe.

[erikstijnen]

(continued)

They asked him the names of the other terrorists. Shostakovich obviously did not know what he was talking about. Zakrevski told him to come back on monday and warned Shostakovich that he must give their names otherwise he would be arrested (and eventually be shot). When Shostakovich returned to the NKVD on monday, after an endless sunday. There, they did not know why Shostakovich came to them. You know why? Because Zakrevski himself was shot on sunday.

[erikstijnen]

You're welcome. Lady Macbeth was written in 1930-32 and the 4th symphony in 1935-1936.

By the way, that very lucky one day he had refers to the following anecdote you might know about. If you do not, here it is:

One day after Stalin's attack in Pravda Shostakovich was called by the NKVD (secret service) on a saturday. Officer Zakrevski tried to convince Shostakovich that he belonged to a group of terrorists who were preparing an attack on Stalin.

[erikstijnen]

Superb and very chilling.....Even more if you know the background of this part of the symphony..

[mrmuch]

What do you mean when you say "the background on this part of the symphony"?

[erikstijnen]

I have read in his memoires (Testimony by Volkov) and in another book by Kryzstof Myer that this part (and also the flute solo part in the 1st part of the 6th symphony) refer to the sleepness nights he had in the period after Stalin had seen his Lady Macbeth Opera. He was (obviously) afraid to be shot or to be sent away to something like the Gulag. You can also read that he was only very lucky one day that this didn't happen.

[mrmuch]

I knew that he was decimated by Stalin's attack in Pravda, but I thought that this symphony was already written by that time. Wow! Thank you for the insight.

[ArturoAlejandroS]

he slept out of his apartment with a bag during the worst time,he thought that the police will arrest him.