Repertoire

• Strauss » Concerto for horn and orchestra no. 2
• Shostakovich » Symphony no. 7 “Leningrad”

Artists

Vassily Sinaisky, conductor
Juan Manuel Gómez, horn

Program

After a highly successful debut at the head of the OBC season, conducting Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, the Russian conductor Vassily Sinaisky visits us again, this time with the Seventh, the symphony dedicated to Leningrad and which was composed while the city was still under siege by the Germans.The work was composed 75 years ago, while Shostakovich and his family were in Leningrad, suffering the siege and hearing news of endless death and destruction. They were evacuated to Moscow, but in August 1942 there was a performance in the same city when the siege had still not been lifted. The Germans tried to prevent the performance by bombing the theatre, but they did not manage to stop the orchestra. Meanwhile, it had already begun to be performed in the United States and had become a symbol of the struggle of the Soviet people against fascism. In July of that same year, Shostakovich appeared on the cover of Time magazine wearing a fireman’s helmet. The Leningrad Symphony is all that and much more: music writ large and a clarion call against the war.

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