"Leningrad Symphony" by Dmitry Shostakovich: new discoveries

The Presidential Library will digitize more than 400 materials submitted by the Saint Petersburg Academic Philharmonia. Among them are the concert programs, photographs, and autographs of the great musicians. The work is carried out within the framework of the agreement concluded by the institutions in September 2017.

In the handed photos, among other things, there are some recorded rehearsals. On one of the pictures in the Philharmonic's “conductor’s living room” there are the composer Dmitry Shostakovich and the conductor Karl Eliasberg sitting next to each other.

The programs of seasonal and calendar concerts held in the Great Hall of the Philharmonia in 1967-1968 are of considerable interest for musicologists and music lovers of the Northern capital. They give an idea of the music performed in those years, as well as the musicians, soloists and conductors of that period.

The programs of the concerts also contain a pronounced ideological component. In 1967, when the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was celebrated, this event was reflected in the philharmonic repertory policy. They have begun to prepare for the event in advance. So, in September 1967, seven concerts from the cycle entitled “Dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of the Great October Revolution” were held.

These concerts differed from others by a carefully selected repertoire, chosen for both an adult listener and a for the children’s perception. The 1st concert of the 1st September subscription included a cantata for the choir of boys, mixed choir and orchestra on the poetry by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky entitled “Our sun shines over our native land.” So, the poem for the strings, the pipes, an organ, two pianos and percussion composer Andrei Petrov dedicated to the memory of those who died during the siege of Leningrad.

The concert from the jubilee cycle entitled “Music for Children” included the best works of Russian composers: the talented Leningrad author Alexander Egorov presented a cantata for the mixed choir “Triumph, October!” while the composers Dmitry Kabalevsky and Anatoly Novikov created songs “Our Children” and “How Soviet country is mighty…”

Though getting acquainted with the programs of the concerts of this period is possible to get back to those far and beautiful years, when people were going to the Leningrad Philharmonic Society “on Serebryakov” — the famous pianist, rector of the Leningrad Conservatory. They went “on Maxim Shostakovich,” “on Irina Arkhipova” and other great performers.

In addition to digitizing the Philharmonic programs that preserved the flavor of time, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the first performance in blockade Leningrad of the Seventh Symphony by D. Shostakovich the Presidential Library began to form a scientific collection connected with the history of the creation of this outstanding work and the fate of the musicians who played it in the besieged city in 1942. The work is conducted jointly with the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic Society, named after D. D. Shostakovich, with the Museum of the Theater and Music Arts, the researchers, and the teachers.

On the Presidential Library website there is a program of “The Seventh Symphony of Dmitry Shostakovich,” dated August 9, 1942. On this day, there was a premiere of that work in the Leningrad Philharmonia. The document, digitized by the Presidential Library, brought new discoveries: Igor Ivanovich Karpets, who was withdrawn from the front especially for participation in the performance of the symphony, appears in the trombone group. The fate of this man was non-trivial: after the war he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Law of the Leningrad State University and became an outstanding Soviet and Russian scholar-lawyer, a brilliant investigator in the field of criminology, was the head of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Studies of the fate of blockade musicians are continuing.

In September 2017, the Presidential Library filmed a video of the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony of Shostakovich in the Bolshoi Zal (large hall) of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia. The St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Altshuler performed the musical work. According to the agreement signed by the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonia and the Presidential Library, the recording of the concert after processing by the library specialists will be handed to the Philharmonic Society in an electronic format and also time will added to the Presidential Library stock.