The Story Behind Shostakovich's Leningrad

Symphony
How Hitler's attack on Russia inspired one of Shostakovich's greatest works.
image: http://assets4.classicfm.com/2009/05/dmitri-shostakovich-1233767711-article-0.jpg

On that peaceful summer morning of June 22, 1941, I was on my way to the Leningrad Stadium to see my
favourite Sunday soccer game, Shostakovich wrote. Molotovs radio address found me hurrying down the
street Our fruitful, constructive existence was rudely shattered! The Nazi invasion of Russia had brought
Hitlers hordes to the gates of Leningrad where they laid siege.
At the time, the 35-year-old Shostakovich was head of the Leningrad Conservatoires piano department. He began
work on his Seventh Symphony in the first hot days of July. Neither savage raids, German planes, nor the grim
atmosphere of the beleaguered city could hinder the flow, he recalled. I worked with an inhuman intensity I
have never before reached.
More than 600,000 people died in the siege. After enduring the terrible conditions for a month, Shostakovich
agreed to be evacuated to Moscow, taking the completed first three movements of the symphony along. With the
rest of the government, he was then evacuated once more, this time to the temporary capital of Kuibyshev on the
river Volga where he finished the symphony in December 1941.
The mammoth work runs for over 78 minutes (the first movement alone lasts nearly half an hour). Shostakovich
asks for an equally gargantuan orchestra including eight horns, six trombones, two harps, a piano, three side
drums and a full complement of other percussion instruments.
The first performance was given on March 5, 1942 by the Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre, which had also been
evacuated to Kuibyshev, conducted by Samuil Samosud. But before Leningrad heard the work, it was broadcast
by the BBC on June 22, 1942 the first anniversary of Russias entry into the war conducted by Sir Henry
Wood.
But how?

A microfilm of the score had been smuggled out of Russia and it was in this way that the US, too, heard the
symphony before Leningrad when Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony in a broadcast on July 19, 1942.
The Leningrad was finally performed in Leningrad itself on August 9 and, until the end of the 1940s, enjoyed
great popularity. But it later fell out of favour and only regained popularity in the 1960s. Despite its often obvious
effects, Shostakovichs Seventh is a stirring piece of contemporary history.

Read more at http://www.classicfm.com/composers/shostakovich/guides/story-behind-shostakovich-leningradsymphony/#wGsOOpeE4VC7sEME.99

The enigma of Shostakovichs

Leningrad Symphony
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/09/shos-s12.html
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