The Leningrad Symphony
Listen now
Description
In an act of defiance during World War Two, starving musicians in the besieged city of Leningrad performed Shostakovich's new Seventh Symphony. The piece was composed especially for the city, which had been cut off and surrounded by invading Nazi troops. During the siege an estimated one million civilians died from starvation, exposure, and the bombardment by German forces. Hear archive recordings of Ksenia Matus who played the oboe in the orchestra, and hear from Sarah Quigley, the author of a novel about Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Dina Newman reports. (Photo: Official Soviet picture of Dmitri Shostakovich working on his famous Seventh ("Leningrad") Symphony. AFP/Getty Images)
More Episodes
Charles Norman Shay was a field medic in the United States Army when he landed on the Normandy beach codenamed Omaha on D-Day. On June 6, 1944, the US 1st Infantry Division faced a bombardment of machine gun fire from the German soldiers on surrounding cliffs. More than 1,700 men died on Omaha...
Published 06/06/24
Published 06/06/24
In 1944, a young Irishwoman called Maureen Flavin drew up a weather report that helped change the course of World War Two. Maureen was working at a post office in Blacksod on the far west coast of Ireland. Her duties included recording rainfall, wind speeds, temperature and air pressure. On 3...
Published 06/05/24