Introduction                                                           

           Dmitri Shostakovichís Seventh Symphony, op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad, was written after the Nazi invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941.  At the time of the invasion, the composer had been involved with piano examinations at the Leningrad Conservatory.  The symphony was completed on December 27, 1941 at the Shostakovichsí new home in KuybÔshev (Samara), 800 km east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.  Shostakovich was ordered to evacuate his home city of Leningrad earlier that year on account of the Nazi siege.  One advantage that the little town of KuybÔshev had going for it in the way of music was that the Bolíshoy Theater Orchestra had been evacuated there along with its conductor, S. Samosud.  It was under his baton that Bolíshoy Theater Orchestra delivered the first performance of the Seventh Symphony at the townís ìHouse of Cultureî on March 5, 1942.  Soon thereafter, the score was put on microfilm and smuggled out of the country.  The Seventh Symphony was premiered in the United States following a tremendous controversy over who would direct the premiere.  The task fell to the Italian conductor, Arturo Toscanini, who led the New York Philharmonic in a live broadcast premiere on July 19, 1942.[1]  The British premiere of the Seventh had been conducted by Charles Wood the month before.  Shostakovichís Seventh Symphony became a worldwide phenomenon overnight.  Hundreds of premieres were conducted in nearly every major city in non war torn Allied countries.  As the many premieres in Britain and the Soviet Union demonstrate, conflict was not even necessarily a deterrent to these performances.  Perhaps the most important premiere of all took place in besieged Leningrad herself.  The story of the Leningrad premiere is among the most stirring in music history.

            Hitler had initiated the siege of Leningrad on September 29, 1941.[2]  Citizens who remained in the city were subjected to constant artillery and aerial bombardment fire.  Hitlerís forces planned to reduce the cityís population so they would not be responsible for feeding the inhabitants following the cityís capture.[3]  The siege lasted for 872 days.  The Soviet offensive of January, 1944 finally lifted the siege.[4]  Hitler begat Leningradís more universal significance to the Allied war effort when he declared that Leningrad would fall by August 9, 1942.  His decision to make this proclamation was an arrogant and foolish one.  Leningrad became the central focus of the wakening Soviet war machine and the native inhabitants defending the city redoubled their efforts in spite of Hitlerís ultimatum.  Instead of the date by which the city fell, August 9 became the date upon which Shostakovichís symphony was premiered.  The premiere was no easy undertaking though.  In reality, the feat of getting together a large enough orchestra populated by performers in good enough health to play the gargantuan piece seemed anything but possible.  Performers had to be recalled from the front in order to fill the seats and food rations had to be increased in order that the orchestra was strong enough to play.  Though battered, beaten, and half-starved, the rehearsals began to come together.  On August 9, a frightening barrage engulfed German positions all along the Leningrad siege line.  Ammunition had been conserved for weeks in anticipation of the action.  When the 45 minute shelling ceased, a strange sound issued forth over the German fortifications.  The Russians had hooked up speakers all over the city so that the radio transmission of the Seventh could be heard by all.  Someone even lit upon the idea of putting huge speakers on the outskirts of the city so that the Germans could hear just how wrong they had been to think they could take the city by August 9^th.  Having become unaccustomed to hearing music during their long months in the trenches, the Germans could only have sat in wonder of the sounds.  People all over the city sat down where they were and did the same.  On that day, Shostakovichís Seventh Symphony transcended itself as a work of art and assumed a greater importance as the symbol of a nation.  The sound of the Seventh became a rallying cry for a people standing on the brink of destruction and shouting defiantly their Will to survive.  Over the last dying notes of the Finale there formed a dream and in that dream resounded the hope, however distant, of a time in the future when there would again be peace.