Shostakovich 7 & Mozart pianoconcert

Experience history and great ideals in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony.
Conductor: Jaap van Zweden
Soloist: Kirill Gerstein

Mozart / Piano Concerto No. 17
Shostakovich / Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’

Ironic marching music, lonely melodies above sound fields of despair, and then that triumphant finale. No symphony is more connected to war and oppression than Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. Top conductor Jaap van Zweden leads the renowned Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in this majestic masterpiece.

“Making music together is so incredibly powerful. It creates solidarity: all of us are one!’ said Jaap van Zweden in an interview with nrc. That feeling was the engine behind his irrepressible urge to make music from an early age. A true rocket engine, which launched his career to great heights. From Amsterdam to Antwerp and from Hong Kong to New York, he played the most beautiful solos as a violinist and held sway over the most famous orchestras in the world as a conductor. But before this top Dutch conductor of international standing breaks loose in Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, piano soloist Kirill Gerstein shines in Mozart’s youthfully sparkling Piano Concerto No. 17. “…this is the kind of serious, intelligent and virtuoso music making that keeps classical music alive,” The Observer wrote of Kirill Gerstein.

Symphony from a besieged city
“Even during the bombing, Dmitri refused to stop composing,” Shostakovich’s wife wrote. “When things got really dangerous, he calmly finished the measure, waited for the ink to dry, then neatly arranged the pages to take them to the air raid shelter.” German tanks besieged Leningrad. The siege lasted from September 1941 to January 1944. One million of the three million inhabitants died of hunger and cold. His friends and relatives, students and teachers of the Conservatory and musicians of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra were evacuated. Shostakovich decided to stay. Most of Seventh was accomplished in the besieged city. The work was premiered in 1942 by the evacuated Bolshoi Orchestra and was also performed in Moscow three weeks later. The score was microfilmed that same month, canned, and surreptitiously shipped to New York where Toscanini performed it with his NBC Orchestra.

Victory of the light
On August 9, 1942, the Seventh Symphony came home to besieged and devastated Leningrad. Fifteen surviving musicians from a radio orchestra were supplemented by brass instruments hastily recalled from the front. Strings, woodwinds and percussionists were plucked from local bands. Despite extra rations, several emaciated musicians fell from their seats dead or unconscious. In a documentary, survivors tell musicians what it meant to them. “We realized that this might be our last concert. There was no food, but that day was a feast. It proved that spirit prevailed over matter.’ In a creaky black-and-white film, Shostakovich dedicates his symphony to Leningrad and the victory over fascism. But his compelling music tells us much more. The composer, who had always lived in fear of Stalin’s reign of terror, later told a biographer: “My idea of victory has nothing to do with violence. I am concerned with the victory of light over dark, of humanity over barbarism, of reason over reaction.”

Source : PLT Website