If I had to list my favorite composers right now, I would list Shostakovich at the top in a heartbeat. There's something about his music that's very unique-- it's like every piece tells a story. Well, the story of this book is about an extraordinary man who lived through the rise and fall of Stalin and felt the tumult of the artist's world as he tried to make a living and an extraordinary piece of music written for a city that had been falling apart long before it was captured in WWII.
The cover:
Dmitri Shostakovich was one of very few people who found a way to live in delicate harmony with the uncertainty of Stalinist Russia and continue to pursue his work. The arts were weaponized, used to forcefully promote the communist agenda. Artists such as Shostakovich, among other prominent writers and composers, were subject to the harsh criticisms of state-run magazines who put them on thrones of unreachable fame and popularity and yet had the power to tear them down in an instant. In the years leading up to World War II, people began to suddenly disappear, in what was known as the Great Purge. It is estimated that 20 million people were sent to labor camps in Siberia during this time, many of whom were established artists that may or may not have taken a wrong step around the sleeping beast of the regime.
Leningrad fared the worst of all of the Russian cities attacked during WWII. In the perfect combination of Nazi military strategy and lack of Soviet resources to combat it, Leningrad was quickly surrounded and all efforts to provide relief completely destroyed. Without food, the people starved, children and the elderly dying quickly. Corpses littered the streets and those remaining alive wished they were dead. The people turned to eating family pets, household items such as leather belts and industrial glues and eventually eating each other.
But the people of Leningrad soon realized that in a matter of starvation, to work was to live.
Dmitri Shostakovich lived his whole life by the piano. At age 13, he was enrolled by his mother into the Leningrad conservatory, where he continued to study his craft, writing his first symphony as a thesis project at age 19. He then began his musical career in the film music industry where he wrote and performed scores for over 30 movies, most of which have been lost to history or exist only in fragments. When the siege of Leningrad began, he was able to leave the city with his family within a few months by plane before he would have been forced to witness some of the worst living conditions in human history and the effects they had on the population. Still, he held the people of Leningrad in his heart while composing his seventh symphony, accordingly dubbed "The Leningrad Symphony". This is the story of that piece of music, its composer and the extraordinary resolve of the people it was written about.
My thoughts:
What made this book attractive to me is that it's about Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer of one particular piano concerto that left a particularly strong impression on me because I was in my second year of formal youth orchestra when I got to perform in a soloist-orchestra performance of it (I obviously remember a lot of the music we played in my first and second years of youth orchestra because I was just new to orchestras in general). That work was his Piano Concerto No. 2, written for his son Maxim's 19th birthday and premiered at his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory. (I suggest that you check it out, especially the first movement because it's a youthful and fun piece of music). The second time I got to be a part of a performance of his work was actually earlier this year for a special performance by this group called Piano Battle and then it was Waltz No. 2 from the Jazz Suite. There's something very sentimental about that piece of music and it just makes me feel like I'm in a room full of dancing people and I can feel the energy of people around me and the thickness of chatter in the air and it feels so good. See, this is what music does to you. It's supposed to make you feel something-- the nature of that feeling is up for the composer to decide but you know the music is good when you're moved by it.
What I find interesting about the circumstances of the 7th symphony is that Shostakovich was made to write it to boost morale in Leningrad and that's exactly what it did. There were posters put up outside the concert hall that there was going to be a rehearsal of the music and 14 starved musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic showed up to practice, out of which, one died during the rehearsal (I think it was the flautist) and his body was just left on the stage, as they had to keep rehearsing and keeping up the morale of the people. The first performance of the 7th symphony was in Leningrad, put on by whatever was left of the orchestra and it was a joy to the people. Literally there was a standing ovation and people just kept urging the orchestra to play parts from it in the encore because they no longer felt abandoned like they had during WWII. At least they were in the hearts of the musicians.
I think another reason that the 7th symphony is of particular note is that it provides a strong contrast between the music that Shostakovich wanted to write and what he was forced to make by Stalin's control of the media. Literally, his job depended on whether Stalin's media liked him or not on any given day-- and he was no stranger to both extremes. Even though he was seeing a higher point in his career in terms of popularity, he felt stifled by Stalin and wanted to rebel, even a little. Shostakovich has this interesting quote about calling the 7th symphony the "Leningrad Symphony" that ties in very nicely here: "Actually I have nothing against calling the seventh the 'Leningrad', but it's not about the Leningrad under siege. It's about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and Hitler merely finished off."
((Guess what?! I've got new books and I'm super excited I might actually be able to make monthly posts!! Happy Reading! If you happen to listen to the 7th symphony after reading this review, please let me know what you think!))
Leningrad fared the worst of all of the Russian cities attacked during WWII. In the perfect combination of Nazi military strategy and lack of Soviet resources to combat it, Leningrad was quickly surrounded and all efforts to provide relief completely destroyed. Without food, the people starved, children and the elderly dying quickly. Corpses littered the streets and those remaining alive wished they were dead. The people turned to eating family pets, household items such as leather belts and industrial glues and eventually eating each other.
But the people of Leningrad soon realized that in a matter of starvation, to work was to live.
Dmitri Shostakovich lived his whole life by the piano. At age 13, he was enrolled by his mother into the Leningrad conservatory, where he continued to study his craft, writing his first symphony as a thesis project at age 19. He then began his musical career in the film music industry where he wrote and performed scores for over 30 movies, most of which have been lost to history or exist only in fragments. When the siege of Leningrad began, he was able to leave the city with his family within a few months by plane before he would have been forced to witness some of the worst living conditions in human history and the effects they had on the population. Still, he held the people of Leningrad in his heart while composing his seventh symphony, accordingly dubbed "The Leningrad Symphony". This is the story of that piece of music, its composer and the extraordinary resolve of the people it was written about.
My thoughts:
What made this book attractive to me is that it's about Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer of one particular piano concerto that left a particularly strong impression on me because I was in my second year of formal youth orchestra when I got to perform in a soloist-orchestra performance of it (I obviously remember a lot of the music we played in my first and second years of youth orchestra because I was just new to orchestras in general). That work was his Piano Concerto No. 2, written for his son Maxim's 19th birthday and premiered at his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory. (I suggest that you check it out, especially the first movement because it's a youthful and fun piece of music). The second time I got to be a part of a performance of his work was actually earlier this year for a special performance by this group called Piano Battle and then it was Waltz No. 2 from the Jazz Suite. There's something very sentimental about that piece of music and it just makes me feel like I'm in a room full of dancing people and I can feel the energy of people around me and the thickness of chatter in the air and it feels so good. See, this is what music does to you. It's supposed to make you feel something-- the nature of that feeling is up for the composer to decide but you know the music is good when you're moved by it.
What I find interesting about the circumstances of the 7th symphony is that Shostakovich was made to write it to boost morale in Leningrad and that's exactly what it did. There were posters put up outside the concert hall that there was going to be a rehearsal of the music and 14 starved musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic showed up to practice, out of which, one died during the rehearsal (I think it was the flautist) and his body was just left on the stage, as they had to keep rehearsing and keeping up the morale of the people. The first performance of the 7th symphony was in Leningrad, put on by whatever was left of the orchestra and it was a joy to the people. Literally there was a standing ovation and people just kept urging the orchestra to play parts from it in the encore because they no longer felt abandoned like they had during WWII. At least they were in the hearts of the musicians.
I think another reason that the 7th symphony is of particular note is that it provides a strong contrast between the music that Shostakovich wanted to write and what he was forced to make by Stalin's control of the media. Literally, his job depended on whether Stalin's media liked him or not on any given day-- and he was no stranger to both extremes. Even though he was seeing a higher point in his career in terms of popularity, he felt stifled by Stalin and wanted to rebel, even a little. Shostakovich has this interesting quote about calling the 7th symphony the "Leningrad Symphony" that ties in very nicely here: "Actually I have nothing against calling the seventh the 'Leningrad', but it's not about the Leningrad under siege. It's about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and Hitler merely finished off."
((Guess what?! I've got new books and I'm super excited I might actually be able to make monthly posts!! Happy Reading! If you happen to listen to the 7th symphony after reading this review, please let me know what you think!))
