Leo T. reviewed Leningrad: Siege and Symphony: The story of the great city terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich on + 1775 more book reviews
The story of the writing, production, and saluatory effect of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony (exalting Leningrad) is wrapped in its milieu of that great city withstanding the NKVD and Hitler's armies. The first pages ('Overture') summarizes the tale and endnotes name the sources throughout. Although Leningrad was the first major city to withstand the Wehrmacht and the Seventh Symphony heartened the world, this is a sad story. Many of those who died during the winter of 1941-1942 from the cold and from starvation were musicians and thus it was hard to gather an orchestra for this long and complicated symphony.
"With spring, the snow began to melt. It revealed the corpses of those who remained in the streets. Some were cannibalized. 'Severed legs with meat chopped off them,; said the clarinettist Viktor Koslov. 'Bits of body with breasts cut off. They'd been buried all winter, but now they were there for all the city to see how it had stayed alive.' A neighbour pounded on the door of Ksenia Matus, an oboist, and begged her to let her in. Her husband was trying to kill and eat her. Worse awaited her when she went to first rehearsal of the Seventh, in the Radiokom studios. 'I nearly fell over with shock,' she says. 'Of an ochestra of a hundred people there were only fifteen of us left. I didn't recognize them. They were like skeletons...'"
Seats were filled by grabbing former army bandsmen and jazz band soldiers from the front line.
Maps, photos, bibliography, index.
"With spring, the snow began to melt. It revealed the corpses of those who remained in the streets. Some were cannibalized. 'Severed legs with meat chopped off them,; said the clarinettist Viktor Koslov. 'Bits of body with breasts cut off. They'd been buried all winter, but now they were there for all the city to see how it had stayed alive.' A neighbour pounded on the door of Ksenia Matus, an oboist, and begged her to let her in. Her husband was trying to kill and eat her. Worse awaited her when she went to first rehearsal of the Seventh, in the Radiokom studios. 'I nearly fell over with shock,' she says. 'Of an ochestra of a hundred people there were only fifteen of us left. I didn't recognize them. They were like skeletons...'"
Seats were filled by grabbing former army bandsmen and jazz band soldiers from the front line.
Maps, photos, bibliography, index.
