Скачать или смотреть DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony no. 4 in C minor, op. 43 - Nikša Bareza (OFFICIAL AUDIO)

Composer: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich
Work: Symphony no. 4 in C minor, op. 43
Performer(s): Nikša Bareza/Simfonijski orkestar Hrvatske radiotelevizije

Shostakovich composed his Fourth Symphony between 13 September 1935 and 20 May 1936, when he was almost thirty; however, he had to wait another twenty years before he actually heard this piece be performed live for the first time.
Before that, his composing career contained a string of successes: his First Symphony was a rousing success wherever it was performed, which was also true for his Concerto for the piano, trumpet, and strings, the Sonata for the cello and the piano, the ballet "The Limpid Stream", as well as the operas "The Nose" and "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsenks District". Still, in January 1936, a notorious Stalinist smear piece was published in the Pravda newspaper attacking the composer, describing his latest opera as "a confusion of chaotic and meaningless sounds". Shostakovich was subjected to a slanderous campaign, but he mustered enough strength to continue his work as a composer and complete his symphony, which was not performed for the following 25 years.
The Fourth Symphony is an acoustic image of fear and hope, despair and small mercies. It was first performed in Leningrad under the conductor Fritz Stiedry, but the piece was subsequently banned after several rehearsals with the orchestra. After the fact, Shostakovich voiced his fear that the Fourth Symphony would suffer the same fate as his opera "Lady Macbeth". In 1937, he received another shock when his protector and friend, Marshal Tuchachevsky, was killed in the Stalinist purges.
It was the Fifth Symphony that restored a modicum of reputation to his person and consequently some peace of mind. However, this lasted only until 1948 when the Zhdanov Doctrine was implemented, which banned and criticized formalistic artworks made for art's sake and which did not serve a larger social purpose. Under such pressure, Shostakovich's self-confidence began to decline and in the mid-1950s he issued a number of statements that proclaimed that the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies were obvious creative failures. In 1956, while writing for the journal Soviet Music, he called his Fourth Symphony a "formally imperfect, overly expanded piece, suffering from what I would call megalomania".
The Symphony premiered in Moscow in 1961 and was conducted by Kyril Kondrashin, while its first performance outside of the Soviet Union was held the following year at the Edinburgh Festival (thanks to the initiative of Benjamin Britten).


This performance was recorded during a concert held on 27 April 2000, at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall.