The Leningrad Blockade Museum

The Museum - Shostakovich's Leningrad

 

An entire section is put aside for Shostakovich's 7th.

A huge bronze of Shostakovich
along with the famous poster
announcing the concert dominates
this ante-room.

 

Sketches on display of the Leningrad premiere
are the only original visual record
of this extraordinary event.

 

Bullet-ridden music-stands and music are chilling reminders of the precarious nature of public performances in war-time.

 

Eliasberg's vastly outsize concert
outfit is on display...

 

But just how did this performance come about?

 

"In spring of 1942 the Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich was performed in Kuibyshev (now Samara) and Moscow. Leningraders decided that this symphony had to be played in the city in which it was born and to which it was dedicated. To do so it was necessary to find more able-bodied musicians and to have them come back to Leningrad. Military authorities helped by granting leave to professional instrumentalists, some of whom came straight from the front. When Karl Eliasberg first studied the score of the symphony (it had been brought to Leningrad by plane), he saw at once that the greatest difficulty for its performers was likely to be that of lack of stamina. The first rehearsals, which lasted only a few minutes, proved his fears to be well-founded. Wind musicians were soon breathless and the ice-cold instruments blistered the brass players' lips. Many musicians were simply unable to lift their instruments - they were so emaciated that it was impossible for them simply to sit on a chair without using cushions.

 

Nevertheless, little by little, the orchestra gradually regained some of its force and sound. Fingers that had become more accustomed to machine gun triggers and trenching spades retrieved the mastery of their musical instrument. When finally the work was to be performed, the headquarters of the 42nd Soviet Army ordered its gunmen to prevent shelling of the city by Germans while Shostakovich's symphony was played, and while the audience was going to and coming from the Philharmonic concert hall. The performance of the Seventh Symphony was a vital event for all Leningraders. They heard within it their own suffering, their anguish and their pain. Ultimately it helped them to reinforce faith in the ultimate triumph of humanity. It was a day of victory at the height of the war. Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony was listened to worldwide. The Nazis had even been preparing to hold a parade in the main square of the city and to hold a banquet at its best hotel.

 

But all who heard this broadcast could only think of, and repeat the words of Erskine Caldwell, the American novelist who wrote: "Who the hell can defeat the nation that wrote such music!"