Cocktail Party Fact: Dmitri Shostakovich composed this symphony during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II, in which he served as a volunteer fireman. A picture of the composer in his fireman’s hat made the cover of Time magazine around the time Toscanini gave the symphony its media-hyped American premiere.

Commitment Factor: About 75 minutes.

Vital Statistics: Modern period. A symphony in the traditional four movements.

What to Listen For: Who can blame Bela Bartok for ridiculing, in his elegant Concerto for Orchestra, the theme Shostakovich used to depict the advancing German army? It’s a silly, vulgar theme, and Shostakovich’s treatment of it — a long crescendo over a repetitive snare drum rhythm — is an obvious and not very successful attempt to replicate the excitement of Ravel’s Bolero. To appreciate this music, you have to listen to it as a document of the horrors amidst which it was composed. Heard in this light it can be powerfully moving, especially the finale, in which the people of the beleaguered city, freezing and starving and all but abandoned by their government and its allies, grimly defend their homes against the Nazi invaders. The musical equivalent of a great monument in a public square.