| Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin | |
|---|---|
| Song cycle by Dmitri Shostakovich | |
 Shostakovich in June 1973 | |
| Opus | 146 |
| Text | Fyodor Dostoyevsky Anonymous |
| Language | Russian |
| Composed | August 23, 1974 |
| Published | 1975 |
| Publisher | Muzyka Hans Sikorski Musikverlage Boosey & Hawkes DSCH Publishers |
| Duration | 10 minutes |
| Movements | 4 |
| Scoring | Bass and piano |
| Premiere | |
| Date | May 10, 1975 |
| Location | Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory Moscow, Russian SFSR |
| Performers | Yevgeny Nesterenko (bass) Yevgeny Shenderovich (piano) |
The Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin (Russian: Четыре стихотворения капитана Лебядкина, romanized: Chetyre stikhotvoreniya kapitana Lebyadkina) by Dmitri Shostakovich is a song cycle composed in 1974. It is his final vocal work.
Despite having a lifelong appreciation for the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Shostakovich did not embark on a large-scale musical setting of them until the penultimate year of his life, when he became fascinated by Captain Ignat Lebyadkin, a character who affected to be a learned poet in Demons. Shostakovich had read the novel while convalescing in Barvikha. He selected several of his verses from the novel and fashioned them together idiosyncratically for his song cycle.
Yevgeny Nesterenko and Yevgeny Shenderovich premiered the work at the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on May 10, 1975; it was the last time Shostakovich attended a premiere of his own music. The reception from the public and press was muted. Alfred Schnittke, who was in the audience, recalled that the hall was only half full. Krzysztof Meyer called the work "truly astonishing", while Bernd Feuchtner, president of the German Shostakovich Society, described it as a "dark counterpart" to the Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
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