Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra & Mariss Jansons

• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975): Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts):
• 1 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): I. [Dirigenten bei der Probe - Einleitung] 00:48
• Für mich ist er ein Genie des 20. Jahrhunderts
• 2 Für mich ist er ein Genie des 20. Jahrhunderts 00:30
• Mariss Jansons` Beziehung zu Dmitrij Schostakowitsch
• 3 Mariss Jansons` Beziehung zu Dmitrij Schostakowitsch 01:17
• Friedrich Schloffer (b. 1961): Die "Leningrader" - Das Werk:
• 4 Schloffer: Die "Leningrader" - Das Werk 01:15
• Mariss Jansons Worte über die Symphonie
• 5 Mariss Jansons Worte über die Symphonie 03:24
• Dmitri Shostakovich (): Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts):
• 6 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): I. Allegretto [Beginn der Probe] 04:26
• 7 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): I. Allegretto [Das ist eine sehr laute Symphonie] 05:37
• 8 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): I. Allegretto [Bitte ein herzliches Wiegenlied] 03:40
• Das Invasionsthema
• 9 Das Invasionsthema 00:32
• Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts):
• 10 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): I. Allegretto [Fortsetzung der Probe] 06:47
• 11 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): I. Allegretto [Das letzte mal, bitte] 01:50
• Gnadenlos wiederholt Schostakowitsch diese Melodie
• 12 Gnadenlos wiederholt Schostakowitsch diese Melodie 00:47
• Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts):
• 13 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): II. Moderato [Der zweite Satz] 02:50
• 14 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): II. Moderato [Aas ist das für eine Musik?] 02:18
• 15 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): II. Moderato [Warum habe ich aufgehört] 04:18
• 16 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): II. Moderato [Ein trauriger Weg] 04:01
• Erinnerung
• 17 Erinnerung 00:34
• Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts):
• 18 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): III. Adagio [Das muss wie eine Orgel klingen] 04:34
• Die sowjetische Propaganda nutzte zunächst die Leningrader wirkungsvoll für sich
• 19 Die sowjetische Propaganda nutzte zunächst die Leningrader wirkungsvoll für sich 01:36
• Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts):
• 20 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts): IV. Allegro non troppo [Probe letzter Satz] 02:31
• Total Runtime 53:35

Info for Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts)

Music against violence and tyranny: Hardly any composer was closer to Mariss Jansons’s heart than Shostakovich, and hardly any conductor was a more authoritative interpreter of his music. He had a direct connection to Shostakovich through his most important teacher Yevgeny Mravinsky, the longstanding head of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra, who had premièred seven of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies. Jansons was thus able to learn much about this music at first hand. He was deeply moved by the manner in which Shostakovich often had to hide his quest for truth behind a pretence of affirmation. One testament to this, harrowing even today, is the Seventh Symphony, the so-called “Leningrad”. It was written in 1941, in the midst of war, in the city of Leningrad as it was besieged by the Germans and largely cut off from relief supplies and food. Though celebrated in the Soviet Union as a patriotic clarion-call against German fascism, in reality the Seventh goes far beyond that, proving to be an indictment of all forms of injustice and suppression – and thus of the Stalin régime. Conveying this was Jansons’s special concern in his performance of the Seventh with the BRSO. Fittingly, he opened the concert with Bohuslav Martinů’s nearly ten-minute Memorial to Lidice, a haunting lamentation and funeral dirge for one of the most gruesome massacres perpetrated by German troops. Jansons’s idea for the 2015-16 season was to add “compositional surprises” to his concert programmes; here his plan found especially gratifying fulfilment.

Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the most important composers of the 20th century. With his works – most notably his fifteen symphonies, which took Late Romantic music and transferred it to the modern age – he has shaped the repertoire. His aesthetic is determined by the impact of the Second World War and also by the political conditions in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Forced to work for the dictator, he also had to make numerous concessions to him.

It was in the war year of 1941 that Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 7 in C major, opus 60. It comes in the approximate middle of his oeuvre and was named the “Leningrad” symphony because Shostakovich dedicated it to his native city (today’s St. Petersburg). The marching theme in the first movement was composed even before the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, in around 1939 or 1940. He wrote further movements in Leningrad, during its siege by German troops from September 8, 1941 onwards, and finally completed the symphony in Kuibyshev (Samara) on the Volga, having been evacuated from the war-torn city together with his family on October 1, 1941. It was there on March 5, 1942 that the symphony received its world premiere, performed by the similarly evacuated orchestra of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre under the direction of Samuil Samossud. The Moscow premiere on March 27 took place in perilous circumstances, but even an air raid alert could not convince the audience to go to the shelters, so captivated were they by the music. The music has retained its fascination to this day, and the Seventh Symphony is considered Shostakovich’s best-known work.

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Mariss Jansons, conductor

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Booklet for Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 "Leningrad" (Rehearsal Excerpts)