Shostakovich 4: anyone else got a 'problem piece' by a beloved composer?

[Nick Armstrong]

Another thread prompted by a passing comment on another thread.

Shostakovich's work is close to my heart. His 15th was my 'portal' to classical music. One of his Preludes & Fugues allowed me to win my only ever musical 'first prize' in a piano competition. I never tire of most of his symphonies, concertos, chamber works, piano works...

But I just do not 'get' his Fourth Symphony. I've listened to various recordings, heard it live twice... It remains totally inaccessible to me. I hear the structure, I hear the Mahlerian influences (I love Mahler)... but it just seems like a sequence of sounds to me in a language I can't grasp.

(Actually I've never listened with attention to his 2nd or 3rd either, but they seem to be generally regarded as of lesser 'stature' - whatever than means. Whereas the 4th ranks high in many people's lists, including a number of Forumites, so I am more puzzled)

There was an interesting (perhaps) counterpoint to this during the 'Essential Classics' chat this morning with the genial Clive Swift who is a big Richard Strauss fan but said that for some reason he just doesn't 'get' "Don Quixote"... I know the feeling (though not about the "Don").

Any thoughts on Shostakovich 4?

Or about your personal examples of other composers' outputs featuring a "problem child" which others enthuse about but you don't "get"?

[ahinton]

I've never had a problem with Shostakovich 4 and have always thought it to be his finest symphony of all; when he attended its long delayed première at the end of 1961, he apparently turned to his friend Isaac Glickman and exclaimed that he felt that it was his finest symphonic achievement to date (or some such words), which is quite something given that 26 intervening years had elapsed and a further seven symphonies emerged from him during that time.

It used to be regarded by some as a sprawling and disorganised pair of outer movements enveloping a tightly constructed but comparatively minuscule middle one, yet I'm not inclined even to think that there was anything about the earlier performance of the work that might reasonably have given rise to any such notion. 2 and 3 are indeed the "exceptions" to Shostakovich's symphonic "rule" and 14 has always been a problem for me until I came to accept it as the song cycle that it is rather than the symphony that it isn't other than by virtue of the number allocated to it by the composer.

It's hard to know how to help you with this, as I am unclear as to what exactly it is about 4 that you don't "get", especially as you "never tire" of most of Shostakovich's works and you love Mahler (whose influence is perhaps never more prevalent in Shostakovich than it is in 4). There are quite a few characteristics in 4 that are to be found elsewhere in his symphonic canon, so it's not as though it represents the Robert Frost-like "path not taken" that I recall the critic Peter Heyworth claiming for it at around the time of the emergence of the old Philadelphia Orchestra / Ormandy recording in the 1960s (I think that it was even cited in the LP sleeve notes); the end of 15 borrows heavily from the end of 4's second movement, as of course you know and there are many examples of woodwind writing in 4 that are not dissimilar in manner to examples in other symphonic works by Shostakovich.

If ever there was, for me, a Shostakovich work of which not a single bar qualifies for "problem child" status, it's this symphony!

Other examples? Well, Tchaikovsky's G major piano sonata comes to mind, as does Chopin's Rondo Op. 16 - maybe Brahms's Academic Festival Overture, up to a point and Schönberg's derangement of that Monn cello concerto - oh and Fauré's first cello sonata (although I've not heard this for years so should really give it another listen before nailing those particular colours to the mast!); these are all examples of composers for most of whose works I have much enthusiasm but which fail to stir me...

[Anna]

I find, if someone says 'I don't get it' to respond with 'forget it, go away for a couple of years and come back' and listen again.

I find No.4 so thrilling, so goosebumpily chilling, that it makes me want to cry and laugh and punch the air with joy and sadness. It is perfection.

Ahem! As you were. My fave recording of it is Kirill Kondrashin, Moscow Phil.

[cloughie]

Another thread prompted by a passing comment on another thread.

Shostakovich's work is close to my heart. His 15th was my 'portal' to classical music. One of his Preludes & Fugues allowed me to win my only ever musical 'first prize' in a piano competition. I never tire of most of his symphonies, concertos, chamber works, piano works...

But I just do not 'get' his Fourth Symphony. I've listened to various recordings, heard it live twice... It remains totally inaccessible to me. I hear the structure, I hear the Mahlerian influences (I love Mahler)... but it just seems like a sequence of sounds to me in a language I can't grasp.

(Actually I've never listened with attention to his 2nd or 3rd either, but they seem to be generally regarded as of lesser 'stature' - whatever than means. Whereas the 4th ranks high in many people's lists, including a number of Forumites, so I am more puzzled)

There was an interesting (perhaps) counterpoint to this during the 'Essential Classics' chat this morning with the genial Clive Swift who is a big Richard Strauss fan but said that for some reason he just doesn't 'get' "Don Quixote"... I know the feeling (though not about the "Don").

Any thoughts on Shostakovich 4?

Or about your personal examples of other composers' outputs featuring a "problem child" which others enthuse about but you don't "get"?

I have never really listened to 2/3/13 or 14. I love Mahler and whereas I have got to know Syms 1 to 5 very well, 6 to 9 (or 10 if you count it as a full symphony have taken very much longer) - I think as I get older, like my computers, my memory is filling up and maybe the operating system is slower. As stated many times on these boards before I have a problem with Bolero - I really dislike it - love most of the rest of Ravel......a bit like Clive Swift and his Richard Strauss! problem, I don't have any problem with that composer, however, he did little wrong as far I can hear.

[Hornspieler]

I have never really listened to 2/3/13 or 14. I love Mahler and whereas I have got to know Syms 1 to 5 very well, 6 to 9 (or 10 if you count it as a full symphony have taken very much longer) - I think as I get older, like my computers, my memory is filling up and maybe the operating system is slower. As stated many times on these boards before I have a problem with Bolero - I really dislike it - love most of the rest of Ravel......a bit like Clive Swift and his Richard Strauss! problem, I don't have any problem with that composer, however, he did little wrong as far I can hear.

Well you have an ally here, cloughie. (I also hate "La Valse" but will happily listen to anything else of Ravel - including his songs and chamber music)

It's the Berg Violin Concerto that bugs me. Everyone tells me that I should love it and I really do try to see what it is that people like about it. I do make the effort to understand it and I always make a point of listening to it (not just "hearing" it) whenever it is broadcast but I'm sorry - I just don't like it and it does nothing for me.

HS

[Nick Armstrong]

Going to be offline for a while so rapid thanks for initial contributions!

Anna and ah. offer very different versions - Anna's somewhat more... visceral! - of the same reaction: both adore it, it seems!

How perplexing my deafness is !!

[Anna]

How perplexing my deafness is !!

Probably your age, Ducks!!

[Nick Armstrong]

Probably your age, Ducks!!

Pardon?

[teamsaint]

Glad you did the thread Cali .

Did you check the Mark Wigglesworth piece? it was a nice read,if nothing else.

I may return with a couple of "problem" pieces, but for now, I have to agree with HS, The Berg Violin Concerto isn't something I have fallen in love with yet...but I tend to think i need to spend more time on Schoenberg/Webern /Berg generally, before I make a proper evaluation or judgement.
Edit..though looking at the OP, berg wouldn't go down as a "beloved composer" for me...yet !

I wonder if there might be a good thread on pieces which you like, but have yet to find a really knockout performance of. One or two spring to mind.

[Stanfordian]

My problem piece has to be Sergei Rachmaninoff's choral symphony 'The Bells'. I have tried hard to admire this work but to no avail.

[Flay]

Going to be offline for a while so rapid thanks for initial contributions!

Anna and ah. offer very different versions - Anna's somewhat more... visceral! - of the same reaction: both adore it, it seems!

How perplexing my deafness is !!

Don't worry, Calibs, you are not alone. I feel the same about Shosty's 4th. I have tried to listen a few times, but always end up leaving it.

I think Anna may be right in what she says. Perhaps if I had come to it in my late teens or early 20s I would feel differently. But (for me) there isn't anything new in this piece that I haven't heard in his other works.

But there again I haven't really given it a chance. As Anna says, there's plenty of time to return to it in the future. Am I bovvered?

[Barbirollians]

I recommend Josef Suk's very emotional reading to anyone struggling with the Berg Concerto - and if you don't like it you can wallow in his superb Mendelssohn and Bruch 1 with which it is coupled .

I have Rattle in Shostakovich 4 - very fine it is too . Nos 2 & 3 do little for me though.

Works I have no time for at all - Carmina Burana . just about the entire output of Harrison B and Peter maxwell Davies ( I rather liked Gawain and the Green Knight though)

Problem children - Brahms's string quartets and Bruckner 3

Most underrated composer - Constant Lambert . I love his music- endlessly fascinating.

[AjAjAjH]

Like Caliban, I just don't understand Shostakovich 4 but I play it often as I love every note of it. The first time I heard it live, I had almost permanent goose bumps.

Two I just don't like and have stopped listening to.

Beethoven; 'Choral' Symphony No.9. Beethoven going OTT and failing.
Schubert: 'Great' Symphony No.9. Just too good to be true, No adventure, nothing out of the ordinary.

I wonder how many hands have gone up in horror!!!!!

[Bryn]

What I don't get is that someone can 'get' the 15th, which pays so much tribute to the 4th, yet not the 4th itself. I wonder of the composer's own arrangement for 2 pianos (for some decades the only way it was ever heard, and then only in private performaces) would help get entry into its essence?

[AjAjAjH]

I should have added to my last post:

Berg's violin concerto