As many listeners know, Karol Szymanowski was a brilliant pianist who wrote a large body of works for his instrument, but he also composed a substantial amount of music for orchestra, the stage, and for voice and chamber ensembles. In his Symphony No. 4, he included a substantial role for the piano—intending to play the first performances himself—but ensured that it contained few serious technical challenges since he was in declining health and no longer able to perform difficult music. Thus, while the symphony is a worthwhile composition, it is unlikely to attract many virtuoso pianists, though Artur Rubinstein played and recorded the piece.

Cast in three movements, the last two played without pause, the work opens with a light, exotic theme introduced by the piano. A second subject is vigorous and agitated, bringing on a change of mood, the music darkening and remaining stormy even through the cadenza near the end of this ten-minute panel. The closing pages are mostly angry and seething with tension, quite the opposite of the gentle, lovely opening. The second movement, marked Andante molto sostenuto, is mysterious and dreamy, the flute introducing an ethereal melody against running piano accompaniment. A solo violin soon takes up the theme and gives it a soothing character, a sense of flotation amid the heavens. Tension mounts in the middle section, but peace returns with a return of the flute, now joined in rendering the main theme by the piano. A bridge passage on the piano leads to the stormy finale, marked Allegro non troppo. Beginning with a rhythmic theme in the lower registers of the keyboard, the music has driving zest and color, but may strike some as being more thematically threadbare than it actually is. The latter half of the movement has a Bartókian character in its sense of motoric drive and percussive rhythms, providing a brilliant close to this powerful, 25-minute work.

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