This glorious symphony, one of the most ebullient, effervescent, and joyful masterpieces of its time, remains today as fresh and sparkling as the day it was minted. Yet its spontaneity was insufficiently acknowledged by its creator who very nearly discarded the precious results of his inspiration, only, bafflingly, to replace them by prosaic phrases of little charm.

In several respects the history of this symphony is the opposite of that of the ‘Scottish’. Its number, ‘4’, reflects only its late date of publication; it was written nine years earlier than No.3. Then for No.3 it is the revised (1843) version that was published and is today always played, whereas for No.4 it is the first (1833). This is fortunate; whereas the revisions to No.3 are all subtle refinements and improvements, those to No.4 are, on the contrary, invariably detrimental, at every point replacing the felicitous with the gawky, the natural with the contrived, the spontaneous with the laboured. The argument may be proffered that such a judgement derives merely from familiarity, but this is too facile a claim; the extent to which every beautiful effect is systematically, brutally cut down is a depressing one, and we can only be eternally grateful to Felix's sister Fanny for her blunt and uncompromising criticism of his revisions.

The work was composed and first performed in 1833, but Mendelssohn remained unsatisfied with it, declaring that it needed “many necessary improvements”. The following year he found himself able to tinker with all the last three movements, but then found the first movement out of kilter and feared he would have to completely rewrite it, which he was reluctant to do. Thus the work remained in limbo for the rest of his life, unpublished in any form. Only in 1851 was it resuscitated by Julius Rietz, who had conducted it in Leipzig in 1849 (he probably chose the 1833 version merely because it was complete whereas the 1834 one was not), and published by Breitkopf & Härtel, who then reissued it as part of their Gesamtausgabe.

sources

All sources considered here are of the First Version (1833) only – except Uh which gives both.