Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich 
Symphony No. 7 in C major op. 60 »Leningrad« (1941)

Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne 
James Conlon Conductor

It was one of the greatest tragedies of the Second World War: on 8 September 1941, the German Wehrmacht closed the blockade around Leningrad. For 872 days, the city remained enclosed, it lay in ruins, a million inhabitants died. In the midst of this, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Seventh Symphony, which was intended to strengthen the people' will to resist. On 9 August 1942, while the blockade was still in place, a performance took place in Leningrad to show both the inhabitants and the world that the city could not be defeated. On microfilm, the score was smuggled to New York, from where it began its triumphal march around the world. Thirty years after his first concert with the Gürzenich Orchestra, former Gürzenich Kapellmeister James Conlon chose Shostakovich's poignant Seventh for his return to Cologne. The concert was recorded at the Kölner Philharmonie on 9 April 2019.