Mahler's Fourth Symphony is his shortest and most frequently performed. It's also the first one for which Mahler didn't provide a specific program, saying, "I know the most wonderful names for the movements, but I will not betray them to the rabble of critics and listeners so that they can subject them to banal misunderstandings and distortions." That didn't stop one 1904 critic from describing the Fourth as "a drooling and emasculated musical monstrosity." Mahler himself seemed pleased with the work, but also wrote to his wife Alma, "My Fourth … is all humor, naïve, etc. It is that part of me which is still the hardest for you to accept and which in any case only the fewest of the few will comprehend for the rest of time." Whether or not audiences understand this symphony as Mahler intended, they've certainly embraced its geniality, serenity, and transcendent last movement featuring a soprano describing a child's vision of heaven.