[4] Critics have said of it: "The Bell is 50 minutes of unrelenting power, and those moments when you think it’s relenting are simply chances for Khachaturian to reload the IS-3 tank that is his orchestra.

The world premiere took place on 30 December 1943 at the Moscow Conservatory, with the State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR and conductor Boris Khaykin.

[6] The symphony's United States premiere was given by Leonard Bernstein and a special orchestra as assembled only for the occasion in Carnegie Hall on 13 April 1945.

[7] Below is the current order: The first movement begins with a bell motif that gives the symphony its nickname, "but it immediately falls into the Technicolor, Armenian-flavored style familiar from Khachaturian's ballet Spartacus," James Reel writes.

[2] "A mournful section develops, carried mainly by the strings, and is repeatedly thrown into contrast with the alarming gesture from the movement's opening bars.

However, the composer wrote of the Andante: "I wish that listeners would not look for concrete illustrations to a series of pictures of superhuman sufferings caused to the Soviet people by the Nazi monsters.