Download Leningrad: Siege and Symphony: The Story of the Great City Terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich AudioBook Free
Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was first played in metropolis of its birth on August 9, 1942. There has never been a first performance to match it. Pray God, there never will be again. Almost per annum earlier, the Germans had begun their blockade of the town. Already plenty had died of their wounds, the chilly, and most of all, hunger. The assembled music artists - scrounged from frontline items and military bands, for only 20 of the orchestra's 100 players had survived - were so hungry, many feared they'd be too fragile to play the score right through. In these, the darkest days of the next World Conflict, the music and the defiance it motivated provided a rare beacon of light for the seeing world. In Leningrad: Siege and Symphony, Brian Moynahan sets the structure of Shostakovich's most well-known work contrary to the tragic canvas of the siege itself and the years of repression and terror that preceded it. In vivid and compelling depth he tells the story of the cruelties heaped by the twin monsters of the 20th hundred years on the city of lovely beauty and fine heads, and of its believe it or not remarkable survival. Weaving Shostakovic's own account and that of many others in to the framework of the maelstrom of Stalin's purges and the brutal Nazi invasion of Russia, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony is a magisterial and moving accounts of one of the most tragic periods ever sold.
