Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941, and his armies raced eastward like a juggernaut until the Red Army and the Russian winter stalled them -- especially at Moscow and Leningrad.
The siege of Leningrad lasted nearly 2-1/2 years. The city was isolated and nothing got in or out except by way of a roadway over frozen Lake Ladoga when there was ice. People survived on a ration of bread that was as much sawdust as flour. They ate pets, the zoo animals, leather goods ,and worse. The death, destruction, and suffering were beyond all description.
Woking inside the city, and later -- After he was ordered out of Leningrad -- in Moscow, Dmitri Shostakovich worked to depict the city's struggles in a heroic symphonic work.
Actually, the story is a little more complicated than that, but Shostakovich produced something that winter that resonated in the Soviet peoples' souls in desperate times.
We'll look at Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 -- The Leningrad -- as the featured work this week.
