Symphony no. 4

Album by Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich & The Philadelphia Orchestra & Myung-Whun Chung

Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43, is the fourth symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich, composed in 1935–36 and withdrawn before its planned 1936 premiere, with the first public performance taking place in 1961. The work combines late-Romantic orchestral forces with modernist complexity, featuring dense textures, sudden contrasts and extended contrapuntal passages, and sits at a crossroads in Shostakovich's career between his earlier experimental tendencies and the more conservative directions that followed the 1936 political denunciation.