The Gateway Chronicle 2020

30
third bar of ‘Deutschland über Alles’. Ian
MacDonald comments on these allusions
posing that the theme is “superficially an
image of the Nazi invasion; more fundamentally
a satirical picture of Stalinist society
in the thirties."
On 2 nd September, the day the Germans
began bombarding the city, Shostakovich
began the Symphony’s second movement
and he completed
in within two
weeks. He then
played what he
had written so far
to a small group
of Leningrad musicians
and started
work of the third
movement which
he completed on
29 th September in
the city. Shostakovich
and his family
were then
evacuated to Moscow
on 1 October
1941. They moved
to Kuybyshev
(now Samara) on
22 nd October,
where the symphony
was finally
completed.
The symphony
was first premiered
by the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra in
Kuibyshev, though the most compelling
performance was the premiere in Leningrad
by the Radio Orchestra in the besieged
city. The orchestra had only 14 musicians
left, so the conductor Karl Eliasberg
had to recruit anyone who could
play an instrument to perform. Posters
were put up and orchestral players were
given extra rations to achieve an acceptably
sized orchestra. The concert was given
on 9 th August 1942, coincidentally (or perhaps
not so) the same day that Hitler had
chosen to celebrate the fall of Leningrad
with a banquet. Loudspeakers broadcast
the performance throughout the city as
well as to the German forces in a move of
psychological warfare. The Soviet commander
of the Leningrad front, General
Govorov, ordered a bombardment of German
artillery positions in advance to ensure
their silence during the performance
of the symphony- an operation code
named “Squall”.
Antiaircraft guns guarding
the sky of Leningrad, in
The political situation in Russia
can be seen through the
front of St Isaac’s Cathedral
musical compositions of Shostakovich, in
which his anti-Stalin, anti-Hitler and fascist
beliefs are clearly reflected: from his
defiant opera “Lady Macbeth of the
Mtsenk District” and the denunciation
that followed, through to the conservative
yet successful Fifth Symphony and his reemergence
as an acceptable composer, culminating
in the Seventh Symphony and its
performance in Leningrad in 1942.
Rosanna, L6AMG