Ivan Krylov (1768 - 1844) was the great Russian fabulist whose Aesop-like animal stories delighted generations of Russian children and their parents. The youthful Shostakovich was no exception, and he set two of the fables in 1922 for orchestra with a mezzo-soprano in the first and a women's (or children's) choir in the second. The first, "The Dragonfly and the Ant," tells the familiar story of the ant who works industriously all summer and the dragonfly who does nothing at all. The second, "The Ass and the Nightingale," tells the story of a singing contest between the two protagonists.

"The Dragonfly and the Ant" sounds like a very youthful Shostakovich in both its ironic but not-yet-bitter melodies and its acerbic but not-yet-astringent scoring. It is a pleasant and very well composed song. "The Ass and the Nightingale," however, blends incipient irony with music of consummate aesthetic beauty. Although the central melody is clearly indebted to French music, especially the chanson of Fauré and the early Debussy, the harmony with its lush ninths and elevenths and parallel chords, and the scoring with its trilling flutes and triangle, is as clearly indebted to the late fairy-tale operas of Rimsky-Korsakov. The abrupt juxtaposition of the song's two elements, the ironic and the aesthetically beautiful, is what makes the Two Fables after Krylov, Op. 4, such a quintessentially Shostakovichian work.

The Two Fables after Krylov were premiered under Gennady Rozhdestvensky in 1974, the year before the composer's death.

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