The symphony uses musical material from the ballet “Insight”, the libretto of which tells about the events of 1905.

The first fragment can be thought of as a large folk scene: its main musical idea evokes images by Mussorgsky, perhaps the choruses from the Prologue or the scene “At Basil’s” from “Boris Godunov”. The awakening, the purposeful movement of the human crowd is expressed with even greater force in the second fragment, where, together with the previously heard ostinato motifs, a mournful song theme is widely developed. Its build-up is interrupted by a harsh, dry, “knocking” fugue – an opposing force, a wall, which the previous movement runs into. In the reprise-coda of the third fragment, the fugue sounds distant, detached, dying down – it is answered by deep mournful sighs of the crowd and a plaintive human voice – a recitation of the English horn. From the individual voices scattered in space, intertwining, continuing each other, a gloomy, but solemn, powerful final image is born in the fourth fragment.