Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 4 is cast in two continuous movements and lasts about 20 minutes. Like other symphonies and orchestral works by the composer, it employs limited aleatoric or chance elements, thus making each performance different. The work is generally considered one of Lutoslawski's more approachable compositions, featuring a healthy measure of lyricism and less dissonance than is often the norm. Still, it will strike some listeners as densely woven and difficult.

The symphony mysteriously opens with strings playing sustained chords and the harp seeming to wander in the darkness. The clarinet then floats a lovely, if reticent melody above the drone-like background, and is joined near the end by the flute, the phrase ending on an ethereal ascent. While the music that follows features several lively passages, the overall character of the movement remains mysterious, even eerie in the string writing, while also divulging an undercurrent of tension in tempos that are generally slow or lacking a sense of thrust.

The second movement, marked Allegro, begins about seven minutes into the work and contains livelier music, though there are many moderately or slowly paced passages. Lutoslawski uses the same melodic material presented in the opening panel, but imaginatively transforms it into many guises. There is less lyricism here, but a greater sense of development, as well as more colorful scoring: hear the playful central episode dominated by piccolo that deftly seems to imitate chirps or peeps, or the intense music on strings and brass that follows.

Again, there is an air of mystery, almost a ghostly Shostakovian sense, in this lengthy movement, but also a restless, conflicted character. Near the end the music seems to be peacefully fading into a playful netherworld when it revives and ends harshly, though with a triumphant defiance.

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