Kick-start your evening with a Half Six Fix concert. One piece in a 60-minute concert, introduced by the performers, with screens in the hall to bring you closer to the action.
Discover this shocking, dissonant, savagely ironic work: a statement of rebellion against Stalin’s dictatorship.
It begins with the engines of industry: mechanical marches, pounding brass. An uneasy second movement, and then a nightmarish vision of life in Stalin’s Russia explodes in a frenzied succession of dance themes.
Shostakovich withdrew his Fourth Symphony before its first performance, after hints that he was treading a fine line with the Soviet authorities. It shines on as an extraordinary vision of thwarted humanity.
