0:00:02 > 0:00:04BELLS CHIME
0:00:05 > 0:00:06WATER LAPS
0:00:14 > 0:00:20Just over 70 years ago, all of this was threatened with destruction in
0:00:20 > 0:00:26the war of annihilation Adolf Hitler was waging against the Soviet Union.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31But the defenders of Leningrad would find the strength to resist
0:00:31 > 0:00:36in unexpected places, including a concert hall.
0:00:38 > 0:00:40We're about to listen to one of the most extraordinary
0:00:40 > 0:00:43pieces of orchestral music ever written.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46Extraordinary not just because of the music
0:00:46 > 0:00:49but because of the circumstances in which it was conceived.
0:00:49 > 0:00:54It's the work of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich,
0:00:54 > 0:00:57and it was performed here in the Philharmonic Hall in Leningrad,
0:00:57 > 0:01:02a city under siege that Hitler had vowed to destroy by bombs
0:01:02 > 0:01:06and shells, but principally by starvation.
0:01:06 > 0:01:12MUSIC: Symphony No 7 in C Major, Op. 60 'Leningrad': IV Allegro Non Troppo composed by Dmitri Shostakovich
0:01:35 > 0:01:40Here's another wrapped corpse being hauled by two men to be buried.
0:01:40 > 0:01:46But alongside is the body of a woman, just abandoned.
0:01:48 > 0:01:50But while Leningrad starved,
0:01:50 > 0:01:54Shostakovich's symphony crossed continents and oceans, uniting
0:01:54 > 0:01:59audiences around the world in their struggle against a common enemy.
0:02:00 > 0:02:02'This is the BBC Home Service.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05'It is fitting that this work should receive its first
0:02:05 > 0:02:09'performance in this country on the anniversary of Germany's
0:02:09 > 0:02:10'treacherous attack on Russia.'
0:02:11 > 0:02:15And, then, against the odds, the symphony returned
0:02:15 > 0:02:17to the besieged city, and musicians,
0:02:17 > 0:02:20some of them literally brought back from the dead,
0:02:20 > 0:02:24defied Hitler by giving the performance of a lifetime.
0:02:25 > 0:02:29This is a piece that makes superhuman demands on any orchestra.
0:02:29 > 0:02:32But a symphony written for half-starved musicians to play,
0:02:32 > 0:02:33it ain't.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39The symphony is going to be performed now in the same hall
0:02:39 > 0:02:41where was played at the height of the siege.
0:02:43 > 0:02:48The conductor is Maxim Shostakovich, the son of the composer.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51As a three-year-old, he was evacuated from the besieged city.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56And alongside us are a precious handful of siege survivors,
0:02:56 > 0:03:00and eyewitnesses to the birth of the symphony
0:03:00 > 0:03:04and to that historic performance just over 70 years ago.
0:03:06 > 0:03:11MUSIC: Symphony No 7 in C Major, Op. 60 'Leningrad': I Allegretto composed by Dmitri Shostakovich
0:03:13 > 0:03:19The Leningrad Symphony is a microcosm of the city in those desperate times,
0:03:19 > 0:03:23a monument to its suffering, heroism and survival.
0:03:24 > 0:03:27It's a work that shows that when death is on the march and
0:03:27 > 0:03:33destruction is all around, art can be a weapon, a shield, a lifeline.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07It's not surprisingly that a piece of music that made history should
0:04:07 > 0:04:10have come from this place, St Petersburg,
0:04:10 > 0:04:15or Leningrad, as it was called in the days of the Soviet Union.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18It was built as a showcase of Russian culture,
0:04:18 > 0:04:22with museums and concert halls, cathedrals and theatres.
0:04:22 > 0:04:27But when war came, these very same landmarks would be used
0:04:27 > 0:04:32by German artillery to range their guns and pinpoint targets
0:04:32 > 0:04:37in a city that stood for everything that Adolf Hitler hated.
0:04:38 > 0:04:41And, yet, somehow, in the midst of all the destruction,
0:04:41 > 0:04:46the cultural heart of the city continued to beat.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49To understand how that happened,
0:04:49 > 0:04:53you have to understand something about the city itself.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00Most great cities evolve over centuries,
0:05:00 > 0:05:06but St Petersburg was willed into existence in a single generation,
0:05:06 > 0:05:09at the behest of one man, Peter the Great,
0:05:09 > 0:05:13to make an epic political, economic, and cultural statement.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Resounding statements have issued from this city ever since.
0:05:17 > 0:05:22MUSIC: Symphony No 5 in D Minor, Op 47: Allegro Non Troppo composed by Eugene Ormandy
0:05:43 > 0:05:47300 years ago, this was a stretch of empty marshland
0:05:47 > 0:05:49on the north-western edge of Russia
0:05:49 > 0:05:53between Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland.
0:05:53 > 0:05:58It was here that Peter the Great sketched his symphony of a city
0:05:58 > 0:06:01which his successors - Catherine the Great and the tsars
0:06:01 > 0:06:06of the Romanov dynasty - orchestrated with colonnaded palaces,
0:06:06 > 0:06:11classical statuary, golden-spired churches, and arched bridges.
0:06:12 > 0:06:17Peter the Great famously said he wanted his new capital city
0:06:17 > 0:06:19to be a window on the West,
0:06:19 > 0:06:25flooding benighted Russia with the illumination of Western modernity.
0:06:25 > 0:06:28But a window looks both ways.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32St Petersburg offered the West a vista on the cultural riches
0:06:32 > 0:06:37of mother Russia, from Crime And Punishment, to Swan Lake.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43But always alongside the culture were the politics -
0:06:43 > 0:06:46politics of a particularly lethal kind.
0:06:46 > 0:06:51This was a city of the proletariat as well as the intelligentsia -
0:06:51 > 0:06:55an industrial city of docklands and factories, slums and dives,
0:06:55 > 0:07:00poverty and unrest, which would ultimately explode into revolution.
0:07:03 > 0:07:06Following a succession of defeats on Eastern Front
0:07:06 > 0:07:10during the First World War, Tsar Nicholas was deposed in 1917,
0:07:10 > 0:07:14and, in the chaos that ensued, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17seized power in a coup d'etat.
0:07:18 > 0:07:19Civil war, famine,
0:07:19 > 0:07:23and the painful birth of the new Soviet system followed,
0:07:23 > 0:07:28during which, by some estimates, as many as 15 million perished.
0:07:32 > 0:07:38When Lenin died in 1924, Moscow got his embalmed corpse.
0:07:38 > 0:07:43This place was left with his name, becoming Leningrad, the same year.
0:07:43 > 0:07:45It proved to be a bad bargain.
0:07:47 > 0:07:50Lenin's successor was Joseph Stalin.
0:07:50 > 0:07:53He mistrusted Leningrad.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56Ethnically diverse, culturally self-confident,
0:07:56 > 0:07:58and politically independent,
0:07:58 > 0:08:02the city was a challenge to his autocratic instincts.
0:08:03 > 0:08:07And, so, once Stalin had consolidated his grip on power,
0:08:07 > 0:08:10Leningrad got it in the neck.
0:08:11 > 0:08:12The back of the neck.
0:08:12 > 0:08:17MUSIC: Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor, Op 67: IV Allegretto composed by Dmitri Shostakovich
0:08:25 > 0:08:29In 1936, Stalin unleashed his Great Terror.
0:08:29 > 0:08:34Violent political repression had been a constant in Russian history,
0:08:34 > 0:08:36but in intensity and scale,
0:08:36 > 0:08:40there had been nothing to match the mass arrests,
0:08:40 > 0:08:43show trials and mass executions of Stalin's terror,
0:08:43 > 0:08:47inflicted across the Soviet Union.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04In Leningrad, Black Marias would fan out from the secret police
0:09:04 > 0:09:09headquarters, the Bolshoi Dom - the Big House - night after night,
0:09:09 > 0:09:12to harvest fresh crops of victims.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16Tens of thousands were sent to the labour camps of the Gulag.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23The rest ended up here.
0:09:25 > 0:09:29This small forest 18 miles north of Leningrad is known as
0:09:29 > 0:09:32the Levashovo Wasteland.
0:09:32 > 0:09:34This is where the bodies
0:09:34 > 0:09:37of those shot by the secret police were dumped.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46Today, family members mark the memory of loved ones by placing
0:09:46 > 0:09:50photographs on the trees that share the ground with their bodies.
0:09:52 > 0:09:56Between the autumn of 1936 and the summer of 1938,
0:09:56 > 0:10:01around 68,000 Leningraders were murdered in this way,
0:10:01 > 0:10:07their names recorded in 13 volumes of the Leningrad martyrology.
0:10:07 > 0:10:12Across the Soviet Union, there were, by the most conservative estimates,
0:10:12 > 0:10:141.5 million arrests,
0:10:14 > 0:10:18and at least 700,000 executions.
0:10:19 > 0:10:24Death on such a scale is almost impossible to comprehend.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27But, as Stalin remarked,
0:10:27 > 0:10:30"One death? That's a tragedy.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34"A million deaths? It's a statistic."
0:10:34 > 0:10:37MUSIC: Counterplan composed by Dmitri Shostakovich
0:11:05 > 0:11:10During the Great Terror, the composer Dmitri Shostakovich,
0:11:10 > 0:11:13like everyone else, walked a tightrope.
0:11:13 > 0:11:15A native of Leningrad,
0:11:15 > 0:11:18he was a prodigy of the city's celebrated conservatory.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20And whilst still a teenager,
0:11:20 > 0:11:23he won international fame with his first symphony,
0:11:23 > 0:11:27and established his claim to be the leading composer of the Soviet era.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30But status brought no immunity
0:11:30 > 0:11:32from Stalin's terror.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35Far more helpful to Shostakovich
0:11:35 > 0:11:37was the song of the Counterplan,
0:11:37 > 0:11:40which he'd written for a hit movie in 1932,
0:11:40 > 0:11:43and which was said to be one of Stalin's favourites.
0:11:43 > 0:11:48In Stalin's Russia, that kind of popularity could save your life.
0:11:55 > 0:11:58With its refrain like a fixed grin, the song of the Counterplan
0:11:58 > 0:12:03expresses the profound optimism now demanded of Soviet composers.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06As Stalin himself said, "Life is getting better, comrades.
0:12:06 > 0:12:09"Life is becoming more joyous."
0:12:27 > 0:12:28FACTORY WHISTLE BLOWS
0:12:31 > 0:12:34The Soviet system was totalitarian.
0:12:34 > 0:12:38It concerned itself with everything a citizen did.
0:12:38 > 0:12:40From mining coal to writing poetry,
0:12:40 > 0:12:42everything was the business of the state.
0:12:50 > 0:12:52But when it came to music,
0:12:52 > 0:12:55the Cultural Commissars were conflicted.
0:12:55 > 0:12:59They sensed that music could be a useful tool,
0:12:59 > 0:13:03but could it be trusted to toe the party line?
0:13:03 > 0:13:07Vladimir Ilyich Lenin loved Beethoven,
0:13:07 > 0:13:11but that very passion troubled him because what if his love
0:13:11 > 0:13:15for the Appassionata Sonata were to sap his revolutionary zeal?
0:13:15 > 0:13:20MUSIC: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57: Appassionata composed by Ludwig van Beethoven
0:13:20 > 0:13:22"I can't listen to music very often.
0:13:22 > 0:13:25"It affects my nerves," Lenin complained.
0:13:25 > 0:13:27"It makes one want to say silly things
0:13:27 > 0:13:29"and to pat people on their little heads,
0:13:29 > 0:13:33"people who can create such beauty living in a filthy hell.
0:13:33 > 0:13:38"But one shouldn't pat anyone on their little heads nowadays.
0:13:38 > 0:13:41"One should beat them. Beat them mercilessly."
0:13:45 > 0:13:49"Not that we want to use that kind of violence against anyone, ideally.
0:13:49 > 0:13:53"Ah, but our duty is infernally hard."
0:14:07 > 0:14:11Under Stalin, the machinery of totalitarianism had fallen
0:14:11 > 0:14:13into the hands of a tyrant.
0:14:13 > 0:14:16Now everything was his business.
0:14:16 > 0:14:19Like Lenin, Stalin was a music buff,
0:14:19 > 0:14:23scribbling terse judgments on the sleeves of his record collection.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26Good. Bad. So-so.
0:14:27 > 0:14:32And when the secret police delivered long lists of names to his desk,
0:14:32 > 0:14:35he annotated them in the same brusque style.
0:14:35 > 0:14:38Beat, beat, and beat again.
0:14:38 > 0:14:40Shoot them all.
0:14:51 > 0:14:56But at a time when the pressure to conform weighed like a mountain
0:14:56 > 0:14:59on the artistic life of the Soviet Union,
0:14:59 > 0:15:01Shostakovich dared to break free.
0:15:48 > 0:15:51Two years after the Song of the Counterplan,
0:15:51 > 0:15:52Shostakovich premiered a new opera,
0:15:52 > 0:15:55Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,
0:15:55 > 0:15:58a grisly tale of greed, lust and murder,
0:15:58 > 0:16:00with sexually-charged music that combined
0:16:00 > 0:16:05extremes of expressionism with radical dissonance.
0:16:34 > 0:16:38By choosing a story set in the bad old days of the tsars,
0:16:38 > 0:16:41Shostakovich must have felt that he'd done enough to be
0:16:41 > 0:16:43politically correct.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45But when Stalin finally caught up with the opera
0:16:45 > 0:16:48two years after its premiere,
0:16:48 > 0:16:53the composer's high-flying career came crashing down to earth.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56At a performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow
0:16:56 > 0:17:01on 26th January 1936, Stalin walked out after the first act.
0:17:04 > 0:17:08This is an article that no Soviet composer in the days of Stalin
0:17:08 > 0:17:11wanted to read, especially when it was rumoured to be
0:17:11 > 0:17:14written by the great record collector himself.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19It was published in Pravda two days after Stalin's dramatic walk out,
0:17:19 > 0:17:24and its title, "Muddle Instead Of Music",
0:17:24 > 0:17:27sets the tone for what follows.
0:17:27 > 0:17:32"From the first minute, the listener is shocked by deliberate dissonance,
0:17:32 > 0:17:35"by a confused stream of sound.
0:17:35 > 0:17:38"Snatches of melody, the beginnings of a musical phrase are drowned,
0:17:38 > 0:17:43"emerge again and disappear in a grinding and squealing roar."
0:17:43 > 0:17:45And it gets worse.
0:17:45 > 0:17:47"To follow this music is most difficult.
0:17:47 > 0:17:49"To remember it, impossible.
0:17:49 > 0:17:54"It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly."
0:17:57 > 0:18:00Maxim Shostakovich, who, as a conductor,
0:18:00 > 0:18:03would work closely with his father, saw, as a child,
0:18:03 > 0:18:07the crushing effects of Stalin's disfavour.
0:18:07 > 0:18:08HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
0:18:54 > 0:19:00The following year, 1937, things took an even more sinister turn.
0:19:00 > 0:19:04Marshal Tukhachevsky, a friend and supporter of Shostakovich,
0:19:04 > 0:19:08fell foul of Stalin's paranoid suspicions.
0:19:08 > 0:19:10The composer was ordered to report to
0:19:10 > 0:19:12the Bolshoi Dom confession factory,
0:19:12 > 0:19:16where he was questioned about a plot to assassinate Stalin,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19supposedly hatched at Tukhachevsky's dacha.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22When he failed to supply the answers required, his interrogator asked
0:19:22 > 0:19:25him to think carefully about it overnight
0:19:25 > 0:19:29and to return the next day with something more incriminating.
0:20:27 > 0:20:29THUNDER RUMBLES
0:20:31 > 0:20:34And then war came to Leningrad
0:20:34 > 0:20:37and a new kind of terror gripped the city.
0:20:44 > 0:20:50For the Soviet Union, the German invasion on 22nd June, 1941,
0:20:50 > 0:20:52was swift and shocking.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56Less than two years earlier, the Nazis and the Soviets
0:20:56 > 0:21:00had alarmed the world by signing a non-aggression pact,
0:21:00 > 0:21:05and, at first, Stalin simply refused to believe that Hitler had broken it.
0:21:06 > 0:21:09The scale of the onslaught soon became clear,
0:21:09 > 0:21:14with German Panzer divisions storming across an 1,800-mile front,
0:21:14 > 0:21:17deep into Soviet territory.
0:21:17 > 0:21:20East towards Moscow, south-east into the Ukraine
0:21:20 > 0:21:25and north-east through the Baltic States towards Leningrad.
0:21:25 > 0:21:28Perched on the north-western edge of Soviet territory,
0:21:28 > 0:21:32Leningrad was especially vulnerable to the German advance,
0:21:32 > 0:21:37coupled with a blocking move from the Soviet's old enemy, the Finns.
0:21:37 > 0:21:38As the Red Army fell back,
0:21:38 > 0:21:42the city on its neck of land between the Gulf of Finland
0:21:42 > 0:21:45and Lake Ladoga was very soon in danger of being
0:21:45 > 0:21:47cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union.
0:21:49 > 0:21:54On 8th September, 1941, the encirclement was complete.
0:21:54 > 0:21:57Hitler ordered his generals to halt their advance,
0:21:57 > 0:22:01to hold their positions and to starve the city to death.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07Hitler loathed Leningrad.
0:22:07 > 0:22:11When Paris fell in the summer of 1940, he came to gloat,
0:22:11 > 0:22:16but the sight of the French capital inspired a grudging respect.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19For Leningrad, he had no respect.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23To him, it was a city of subhuman "Untermensch" -
0:22:23 > 0:22:26Slavs, Bolsheviks, Jews.
0:22:26 > 0:22:31Their city could be destroyed, and in the cruellest way imaginable -
0:22:31 > 0:22:34deliberate slow starvation.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42Rationing had been introduced in Leningrad in July.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45To begin with, the ration levels were generous -
0:22:45 > 0:22:49workers receiving double the amount given to so-called dependents,
0:22:49 > 0:22:51women, children, the elderly.
0:22:51 > 0:22:55But once the siege began in earnest, the ration quickly fell
0:22:55 > 0:22:59and for dependents, the fall was acute,
0:22:59 > 0:23:02from 400 grams a day in July 1941,
0:23:02 > 0:23:05to just 125 in November -
0:23:05 > 0:23:09less than 20% of the calories needed to survive.
0:23:11 > 0:23:16This is what 125 grams of bread would have looked like.
0:23:16 > 0:23:21It's pitiful, but this was the daily ration for dependents
0:23:21 > 0:23:24during one of the coldest winters even known.
0:23:26 > 0:23:31This is good quality bread made from lovely fragrant flour.
0:23:33 > 0:23:37During the siege, bread was adulterated with all sorts.
0:23:37 > 0:23:42Pine shavings, animal fodder, the sweepings off the bakery floor.
0:23:42 > 0:23:49It came out looking and tasting like a lump of damp clay.
0:23:49 > 0:23:52Yet, to a city ravaged by hunger,
0:23:52 > 0:23:55this was the most precious thing on earth.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02The Soviet ration system was based on principles originally
0:24:02 > 0:24:06developed in the Gulag, where food was distributed,
0:24:06 > 0:24:11not according to need, but according to your capacity for work.
0:24:11 > 0:24:14But keeping a family alive did not count as work.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20The work of sheer survival fell mostly to mothers.
0:24:22 > 0:24:25Getting up at dawn, cold and famished,
0:24:25 > 0:24:30summoning the energy to get out and join a bread queue, and then
0:24:30 > 0:24:36to stand there for hours in bitter cold, exposed to artillery and bombs,
0:24:36 > 0:24:40and all for a meagre ration of adulterated bread.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47So what use is a composer to a city under siege?
0:24:47 > 0:24:49What kind of work should he do?
0:24:51 > 0:24:53Turned down for active service,
0:24:53 > 0:24:56Shostakovich dug trenches before being assigned to
0:24:56 > 0:24:59fire-watching duties on the roof of the Conservatory.
0:24:59 > 0:25:02A perfect photo opportunity that produced an image that would
0:25:02 > 0:25:05later come to define the siege.
0:25:05 > 0:25:09Firefighter Shostakovich composing, despite the bombs and the shells.
0:25:11 > 0:25:15And, like all the best propaganda, it was true.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19On 19th July, just a few days after the fall of the Russian city
0:25:19 > 0:25:23of Smolensk, he began work on a new composition -
0:25:23 > 0:25:26a symphony, his seventh, in four movements.
0:25:33 > 0:25:36Composers have often attempted to capture or commemorate
0:25:36 > 0:25:38moments of war.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture,
0:25:42 > 0:25:45but, as musicologist Marina Frolova-Walker explains,
0:25:45 > 0:25:49none have done that in the heat of battle.
0:25:49 > 0:25:53This is what is so unique about it because when the war started
0:25:53 > 0:25:55Shostakovich was the only one
0:25:55 > 0:26:00who actually started writing a symphony pretty soon after that.
0:26:00 > 0:26:05Usually we say that time needs to pass for thoughts to be
0:26:05 > 0:26:09packaged in symphonic form, but Shostakovich managed to do
0:26:09 > 0:26:14it at that time and I don't know anyone else who managed to do that.
0:26:14 > 0:26:16The most obvious place where that happens,
0:26:16 > 0:26:20most famously in the first movement, is what has become called
0:26:20 > 0:26:21"The Invasion Theme",
0:26:21 > 0:26:24which starts with a side drum, takes over the whole orchestra
0:26:24 > 0:26:27and seems almost to kind of destroy everything in its path,
0:26:27 > 0:26:29musically speaking.
0:26:29 > 0:26:33Look, here it is here, starting with the side drums.
0:26:33 > 0:26:35I might give this a go.
0:27:00 > 0:27:02And so it goes on.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06The same inane little tune repeating and repeating a dozen times,
0:27:06 > 0:27:12building and building, pianissimo to fortissimo, for more than 340 bars.
0:27:18 > 0:27:20I think what he does is very original
0:27:20 > 0:27:23and I know lots of critics say it is not.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26You know, they said this is like Ravel's Bolero...
0:27:26 > 0:27:29- Because of the repetition? - ..because of the repetition.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33And yet, what I think is absolutely unique about this is that war
0:27:33 > 0:27:36has never been portrayed in this way, in this grotesque way.
0:27:36 > 0:27:42So what Shostakovich seems to say, that any banal, ordinary thing
0:27:42 > 0:27:45can become so terrifying and so evil.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49Neither Hitler nor Stalin, nor anyone else,
0:27:49 > 0:27:52they were not particularly evil geniuses.
0:27:52 > 0:27:56They were ordinary people. One was a mediocre painter.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00The other one, a mediocre poet, and look what happens.
0:29:23 > 0:29:26Shostakovich was able to complete two more movements
0:29:26 > 0:29:28of the symphony in Leningrad,
0:29:28 > 0:29:29but at the beginning of October,
0:29:29 > 0:29:32as the military situation deteriorated, he was airlifted
0:29:32 > 0:29:37out of the city with the fourth and final movement incomplete.
0:30:06 > 0:30:09For those left behind in the besieged city,
0:30:09 > 0:30:12October marked the start of what became known as the
0:30:12 > 0:30:14"starvation winter".
0:30:14 > 0:30:17It was the coldest anyone could remember.
0:30:17 > 0:30:21The first snows fell early that year in mid-October and after that,
0:30:21 > 0:30:27temperatures plummeted, reaching record lows of minus 35 centigrade.
0:30:29 > 0:30:33The Arctic temperatures froze the waters of Lake Ladoga,
0:30:33 > 0:30:38allowing a few supplies to reach the city by truck at great hazard
0:30:38 > 0:30:41across the so-called "Ice Road".
0:30:41 > 0:30:46But even with this fragile lifeline, hunger soon began to bite.
0:30:48 > 0:30:52Cats and dogs quickly disappeared from the streets,
0:30:52 > 0:30:57victims of a new kind of siege cuisine in which fresh meat,
0:30:57 > 0:31:00whatever its source, became a luxury.
0:31:00 > 0:31:06As for the rest, a typical siege menu consisted of rissoles made
0:31:06 > 0:31:08of mustard and carpenter's glue
0:31:08 > 0:31:12and soup made from boiled leather belts.
0:31:13 > 0:31:18Throughout the siege, the city was under threat from artillery
0:31:18 > 0:31:23and air raids, but Leningrad was not blitzed to the ground.
0:31:23 > 0:31:29For most, death would not be sudden and violent, but slow and agonising.
0:31:31 > 0:31:36By November, the first deaths from malnutrition were being reported.
0:31:36 > 0:31:40The authorities insisted on the use of the word "dystrophy" -
0:31:40 > 0:31:45a euphemism that failed to obscure a terrible truth.
0:31:45 > 0:31:47Leningrad was starving.
0:31:51 > 0:31:55This is a very compelling, shocking photograph.
0:31:55 > 0:32:01On the face of it, it looks like a bent old woman hauling her son...
0:32:03 > 0:32:08..but it's perfectly possible that they were husband and wife.
0:32:10 > 0:32:14The effect of malnutrition
0:32:14 > 0:32:17was horribly, horribly ageing.
0:32:19 > 0:32:25Women in particular looked 20 to 30 years older than their real age.
0:32:33 > 0:32:38But also...this young man
0:32:38 > 0:32:41is not as well fed as he appears.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45He's actually swollen with oedema.
0:32:45 > 0:32:50It's one of the last stages of starvation.
0:32:51 > 0:32:56And also he has the swarthy look
0:32:56 > 0:32:59from skin discolouration,
0:32:59 > 0:33:04which is one of the symptoms of starvation,
0:33:04 > 0:33:09what, with black humour, came to be dubbed "a siege tan".
0:33:18 > 0:33:22By December, the first mummies have appeared.
0:33:23 > 0:33:26Corpses of loved ones
0:33:26 > 0:33:30wrapped in fabric to be taken to
0:33:30 > 0:33:33improvised graves.
0:33:33 > 0:33:38People couldn't afford to give up wood for proper coffins.
0:33:41 > 0:33:43What a tragic, tragic picture.
0:33:46 > 0:33:51This is a photograph from Orphanage 38.
0:33:54 > 0:33:58Orphanage staff reported dying mothers
0:33:58 > 0:34:02using the very last of their strength to carry their babies
0:34:02 > 0:34:08and small children to the orphanage to leave them there...
0:34:09 > 0:34:12..and then to go home to die.
0:34:20 > 0:34:24Life in the besieged city came to be measured out
0:34:24 > 0:34:26by the ticks of a metronome.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32It was broadcast on Radio Leningrad in the breaks between programmes
0:34:32 > 0:34:36and was meant to show that the city still lived.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42This was the soundtrack of the siege,
0:34:42 > 0:34:45at least until the symphony appeared.
0:34:47 > 0:34:52It became a truism of the times that everyone had their own siege.
0:34:58 > 0:35:00THEY GREET EACH OTHER
0:35:26 > 0:35:31The memories of 91-year-old Olga Kvade remain pin sharp.
0:35:33 > 0:35:38Olga, how old were you when the siege began and what were you doing?
0:39:36 > 0:39:38Far away from the suffering city,
0:39:38 > 0:39:42Shostakovich struggled to complete the Seventh Symphony.
0:39:42 > 0:39:45Evacuated to Moscow, he and his family soon had to
0:39:45 > 0:39:50flee from there too as the Germans continued their inexorable advance.
0:39:51 > 0:39:53Along with thousands of other refugees,
0:39:53 > 0:39:57they travelled by train hundreds of miles east.
0:39:57 > 0:40:00After a chaotic seven-day journey, during which the score
0:40:00 > 0:40:05of the Seventh was nearly lost forever, they ended up in Kuybyshev,
0:40:05 > 0:40:07the Soviet Union's provisional wartime capital
0:40:07 > 0:40:10on the banks of the Volga river.
0:40:10 > 0:40:13It was in this overcrowded city of refugees,
0:40:13 > 0:40:15in cramped, noisy accommodation,
0:40:15 > 0:40:17that Shostakovich tried to find
0:40:17 > 0:40:19a fitting resolution to his epic work...
0:40:21 > 0:40:23..a musical victory that he hoped would inspire
0:40:23 > 0:40:26the ultimate military victory.
0:40:28 > 0:40:32But how do you write out musically victory
0:40:32 > 0:40:33when victory is not in sight,
0:40:33 > 0:40:35because quite a lot of people thought at this time
0:40:35 > 0:40:37the war was lost?
0:40:37 > 0:40:42It was such a huge devastating moment, so there wasn't even a chink
0:40:42 > 0:40:46of light at the end of the tunnel and the torment is in that finale.
0:40:46 > 0:40:50I think the torment of him trying to write this finale,
0:40:50 > 0:40:53but also the torment that people are going on on the way, this victory.
0:40:53 > 0:40:56Somehow this, again, it coincides.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00The compositional process coincides with the war.
0:41:06 > 0:41:09People can say you can't read all this into music,
0:41:09 > 0:41:12but this is what happens with music, which is programmatic.
0:41:12 > 0:41:14So it's telling a story?
0:41:14 > 0:41:17Yes, and he has to get through gradually,
0:41:17 > 0:41:22literally semitone by semitone, he moves up, another page of music and
0:41:22 > 0:41:26then he moves another semitone up and then another page, so it's going
0:41:26 > 0:41:30painstakingly slowly, but then, when it finally comes, yeah,
0:41:30 > 0:41:33then there's this sense of elation.
0:41:35 > 0:41:37He must have been very pleased with himself.
0:41:37 > 0:41:40He usually was when he wrote something good.
0:42:13 > 0:42:16In Leningrad, the metronome ticked on
0:42:16 > 0:42:19but it was beginning to sound like a death rattle
0:42:19 > 0:42:22rather than a heartbeat.
0:42:22 > 0:42:24The musical life of the city,
0:42:24 > 0:42:28a vital boost to morale throughout the summer and autumn, had continued
0:42:28 > 0:42:33with concerts and broadcasts, right up until the end of December 1941.
0:42:34 > 0:42:38But now, as the new year began, the city's one remaining orchestra,
0:42:38 > 0:42:44the Radiokom, based at the Radio House, was near collapse.
0:42:44 > 0:42:47A stark memo from the time reads,
0:42:47 > 0:42:50"Leader, first violins - dead.
0:42:50 > 0:42:52"Bassoon - near death.
0:42:52 > 0:42:56"Senior percussionist - dead."
0:42:56 > 0:43:00METRONOME TICKS
0:43:05 > 0:43:09But it was in the snow-choked courtyards, frozen stairwells
0:43:09 > 0:43:13and cramped rooms of the city's communal apartment blocks,
0:43:13 > 0:43:17that the daily grind of survival was at its most implacable.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25In this painstakingly reconstructed siege room,
0:43:25 > 0:43:30you can sense the claustrophobic atmosphere of a domestic nightmare.
0:43:34 > 0:43:39It was a world in which mundane objects took on huge significance.
0:43:40 > 0:43:43A homemade oil lamp, nicknamed a smoker,
0:43:43 > 0:43:46that gave off more fumes than light.
0:43:46 > 0:43:52The speaker wired to Radio Leningrad for when the electricity was working.
0:43:52 > 0:43:55The child's sledge, the szaky,
0:43:55 > 0:44:00now used to haul wood, water and corpses.
0:44:02 > 0:44:06An improvised stove fed with scraps of anything that would burn...
0:44:08 > 0:44:12..as siege survivor Tamara Korol'Kevich recalls.
0:44:43 > 0:44:47During the dead days of December, January and February,
0:44:47 > 0:44:52when it was dark for 18 out of 24 hours, any time not spent queuing
0:44:52 > 0:44:54for bread or scrounging for wood,
0:44:54 > 0:44:57was spent daydreaming about food,
0:44:57 > 0:45:00reading and, for some, writing a diary.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05One of the most revealing of these siege diaries
0:45:05 > 0:45:11was written by Elena Kochina, a scientist, whose observations
0:45:11 > 0:45:13have the calm objectivity of her profession.
0:45:15 > 0:45:19Just before the Germans closed around the city,
0:45:19 > 0:45:24Elena's laboratory was evacuated and she had the chance to leave,
0:45:24 > 0:45:29but she delayed because her baby daughter Lena had a slight fever.
0:45:29 > 0:45:31It was a fateful decision.
0:45:31 > 0:45:35A few days later, Leningrad was cut off.
0:45:35 > 0:45:40Elena, the baby and her husband Dima were trapped,
0:45:40 > 0:45:43and when the starvation winter came,
0:45:43 > 0:45:45the bonds of love within this little family
0:45:45 > 0:45:48were strained to breaking point.
0:45:49 > 0:45:54Elena kept her baby alive on millet porridge eked out from a small
0:45:54 > 0:45:58supply she had managed to stockpile at the very start of the siege.
0:45:59 > 0:46:05But one day, she discovers that her husband Dima has been stealing it.
0:46:07 > 0:46:12"26th November. Today when I unexpectedly came into the room,
0:46:12 > 0:46:16"I found Dima hurriedly chewing the millet.
0:46:16 > 0:46:20"'Don't you dare eat it,' I yelled, losing control of myself.
0:46:20 > 0:46:23"'Shut up. I can't help myself.'
0:46:23 > 0:46:26"His eyes looked at me with despair.
0:46:26 > 0:46:28"I shut up and my anger passed.
0:46:28 > 0:46:30"I began to pity him.
0:46:30 > 0:46:34"I now take the millet with me when I leave the house.
0:46:34 > 0:46:37"Dima is angry at me, but he keeps quiet.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42"13th December. Lena is sick.
0:46:42 > 0:46:46"Dima doesn't help me any more.
0:46:46 > 0:46:48"He doesn't even play with Lena.
0:46:48 > 0:46:52"He only goes willingly to the bread store for our rations.
0:46:54 > 0:46:57"He's probably eating bits of it on the way back home.
0:46:59 > 0:47:05"6th January. Lice torment both of us a lot. We sleep together.
0:47:05 > 0:47:07"There's only one bed in the room.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11"But even through padded coats, it's unpleasant for us
0:47:11 > 0:47:14"to feel one another's touch.
0:47:14 > 0:47:17"We've never been as remote from one another.
0:47:18 > 0:47:22"Each of us struggles silently with our own suffering.
0:47:23 > 0:47:28"10th January. Lena has forgotten how to talk.
0:47:28 > 0:47:32"She's no longer able to stand or even to sit up.
0:47:32 > 0:47:37"Her skin hangs in creases. She sings quietly all the time.
0:47:37 > 0:47:41"Evidently, she's begging to eat.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45"I kissed her eyes. The eyes of a hungry little wolf.
0:47:45 > 0:47:47"'You're doing that on purpose,' Dima said.
0:47:47 > 0:47:51"'You're purposely caressing Lena. You want to torment me.'
0:47:53 > 0:47:57"12th January. I took Lena to the clinic.
0:47:57 > 0:48:00"Waiting for the doctor, I put her on the table.
0:48:00 > 0:48:04"'Don't leave that child unattended,' a nurse whispered.
0:48:05 > 0:48:08"'We've had cases of children being kidnapped.'
0:48:08 > 0:48:13"Kidnapped, she means, for food, by cannibals."
0:48:16 > 0:48:19Throughout the starvation winter,
0:48:19 > 0:48:22rumours of cannibalism were rife in the city.
0:48:22 > 0:48:26In the bread queues, people whispered about gangs who snatched
0:48:26 > 0:48:30babies or lured victims to abandoned apartments,
0:48:30 > 0:48:36where they were murdered, butchered and their body parts eaten or sold.
0:48:36 > 0:48:40After the war, cannibalism became one of the siege's greatest taboos -
0:48:40 > 0:48:43a grisly legend officially denied,
0:48:43 > 0:48:46but never entirely repressed.
0:48:46 > 0:48:50It wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet system that researchers
0:48:50 > 0:48:54were able to assess the hard evidence documented in the files
0:48:54 > 0:48:56of the secret police.
0:48:56 > 0:48:59What they discovered were not marauding gangs
0:48:59 > 0:49:03of baby-snatching murderers, but, for the most part, desperate
0:49:03 > 0:49:08women, new to the city, without resources, work or connections,
0:49:08 > 0:49:11sometimes even without ration cards.
0:49:11 > 0:49:16Some scavenged flesh from the corpses that lay in the streets.
0:49:16 > 0:49:18Others, in the most extreme cases,
0:49:18 > 0:49:22murdered one of their own children to feed the rest.
0:49:24 > 0:49:28These eye-witness scenes painted during the siege by artist
0:49:28 > 0:49:33Mikhail Georgovich capture the frenzy of hunger
0:49:33 > 0:49:36that drove some Leningraders to prey on their neighbours.
0:49:39 > 0:49:43Nevertheless, in spite of terrible privation,
0:49:43 > 0:49:46order in the starving city never broke down.
0:49:59 > 0:50:03By early February 1942, in Kuybyshev,
0:50:03 > 0:50:04the Seventh Symphony was being
0:50:04 > 0:50:07rehearsed by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra which had been
0:50:07 > 0:50:10evacuated from Moscow along with foreign embassies
0:50:10 > 0:50:14and the political and bureaucratic machinery of the Soviet government.
0:50:23 > 0:50:25Shostakovich, himself a refugee,
0:50:25 > 0:50:28attended the run-through of the first two movements
0:50:28 > 0:50:30and, as he later wrote,
0:50:30 > 0:50:33"For half a day I rejoiced over my baby."
0:50:34 > 0:50:35HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
0:50:46 > 0:50:48The conductor Samuil Samosud
0:50:48 > 0:50:51evidently felt there was still room for improvement
0:50:51 > 0:50:54and he tried to persuade Shostakovich to rewrite the finale
0:50:54 > 0:50:59to include chorists and soloists with a text in praise of Stalin.
0:50:59 > 0:51:01With characteristic evasiveness,
0:51:01 > 0:51:06Shostakovich thanked him for his valuable remarks which,
0:51:06 > 0:51:08as he later confided to a friend,
0:51:08 > 0:51:11"I take into consideration but not into practice."
0:51:14 > 0:51:18The world premiere of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony,
0:51:18 > 0:51:21dedicated by the composer to the city of Leningrad,
0:51:21 > 0:51:26took place on 5th March, 1942, in the Kuybyshev Opera House.
0:51:28 > 0:51:31Iosif Raiskin, a six-year-old evacuee from Leningrad,
0:51:31 > 0:51:33was in the audience.
0:56:46 > 0:56:51Later that March, the Leningrad Symphony was performed in Moscow.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54As Shostakovich took his customary sheepish bow,
0:56:54 > 0:56:59one observer commented, "This man is now more powerful than Hitler."
0:57:01 > 0:57:03Shostakovich would move to Moscow,
0:57:03 > 0:57:07where he'd remain for the rest of the war, but his Seventh Symphony
0:57:07 > 0:57:11was about to begin a remarkable odyssey across a war-torn world.
0:57:12 > 0:57:15Photographed on 900 pages of microfilm,
0:57:15 > 0:57:19the score was put on a secret flight out of Moscow to Tehran,
0:57:19 > 0:57:24then overland to Cairo and on to London and a sandbagged building in
0:57:24 > 0:57:29Portland Place, which itself was no stranger to the deprivations of war.
0:57:31 > 0:57:34'This is the BBC Home Service.
0:57:34 > 0:57:37'Many of you will already know that the length of the Shostakovich...'
0:57:37 > 0:57:40The arrival of the Leningrad Symphony at the BBC
0:57:40 > 0:57:42caused consternation.
0:57:42 > 0:57:46They'd heard rumours that it was big, but no-one realised just
0:57:46 > 0:57:50how big until the microfilm pages had been turned into a score.
0:57:50 > 0:57:53At his first rehearsal at the Maida Vale Studio,
0:57:53 > 0:57:58conductor Sir Henry Wood timed the symphony at 78-and-a-half minutes,
0:57:58 > 0:58:00which mean that, when broadcast,
0:58:00 > 0:58:04it would overrun the sacred chimes of Big Ben at nine o'clock.
0:58:07 > 0:58:11As this internal BBC memo reveals, the presentation editor,
0:58:11 > 0:58:13a Mr Phillips,
0:58:13 > 0:58:17suggested tentatively that the symphony be broken between the third
0:58:17 > 0:58:21and fourth movements to accommodate the Nine O'Clock News bulletin.
0:58:21 > 0:58:25Well, in the end, wiser deputy heads prevailed
0:58:25 > 0:58:29and it was decided that the symphony could indeed go ahead uninterrupted.
0:58:29 > 0:58:34And, as for the chimes of Big Ben, well, they'd just have to wait.
0:58:34 > 0:58:38'It is fitting that this work should receive its first performance
0:58:38 > 0:58:41'in this country on the anniversary of Germany's treacherous
0:58:41 > 0:58:43'attack on Russia.
0:58:43 > 0:58:47'It was written in the besieged fortress of Leningrad
0:58:47 > 0:58:51'and the last movement interprets the faith and aspirations of Russia
0:58:51 > 0:58:55'crystallised in its title, Victory.'
0:59:06 > 0:59:07On the night,
0:59:07 > 0:59:11Sir Henry Wood stormed through the Seventh in just 70 minutes
0:59:11 > 0:59:14causing yet more panic at Broadcasting House
0:59:14 > 0:59:18when the performance ended four minutes shy of nine o'clock.
0:59:18 > 0:59:20But Mr Phillips in Pres vamped valiantly
0:59:20 > 0:59:23until the chimes of Big Ben were ready
0:59:23 > 0:59:26and the Beeb, in the words of the Director General,
0:59:26 > 0:59:28came through "in flying colours".
0:59:30 > 0:59:33While the BBC patted itself on the back, the Seventh's journey
0:59:33 > 0:59:38continued via South America to New York where star conductors
0:59:38 > 0:59:42Serge Koussevitzky, Leopold Stokowski and Arturo Toscanini
0:59:42 > 0:59:46fought politely but determinedly for the privilege
0:59:46 > 0:59:48of premiering the work.
0:59:50 > 0:59:53In the end, Toscanini pulled rank.
0:59:53 > 0:59:55As a veteran anti-fascist
0:59:55 > 0:59:58and publically sworn enemy of the Italian dictator
0:59:58 > 1:00:02Benito Mussolini, he secured the gig for his NBC Symphony Orchestra.
1:00:04 > 1:00:08And so, in the same week that the staunchly anti-Soviet
1:00:08 > 1:00:12Time magazine ran a cover story on the heroism and creative genius of
1:00:12 > 1:00:17fireman Shostakovich, NBC informed its audience that Red Russia
1:00:17 > 1:00:22was now America's doughty ally in the battle for freedom
1:00:22 > 1:00:24and the proof was the Leningrad Symphony.
1:00:25 > 1:00:28- RADIO:- 'The musical work is descriptive not only of the horrors
1:00:28 > 1:00:29'of Nazi fascism
1:00:29 > 1:00:32'but of the indomitable will of a fighting people
1:00:32 > 1:00:35'to crush this monster and win through to final victory and freedom
1:00:35 > 1:00:37'for all men.'
1:00:37 > 1:00:40Within just a year, the Leningrad Symphony had been performed
1:00:40 > 1:00:46nearly 100 times, an unprecedented performance history for a new work.
1:00:46 > 1:00:49There was, though, one place where it had yet to be performed.
1:00:49 > 1:00:53The city where, of course, it meant most of all.
1:00:59 > 1:01:03In besieged Leningrad, spring was on its way at last.
1:01:05 > 1:01:10With a population savagely depleted by half a million deaths,
1:01:10 > 1:01:13there was at least more food for the survivors
1:01:13 > 1:01:17and the ration was increased,
1:01:17 > 1:01:19even the trams were running again.
1:01:19 > 1:01:22When people heard their bells ringing once more,
1:01:22 > 1:01:26they greeted them like old friends, with tears in their eyes.
1:01:28 > 1:01:33But though the city was emerging from its frozen immobility,
1:01:33 > 1:01:36survivors were sick and exhausted.
1:01:36 > 1:01:41Unable to generate enough warmth from their emaciated bodies,
1:01:41 > 1:01:44they dressed in thick layers, even in the early spring sunshine.
1:01:46 > 1:01:49And though their bodies remained cold,
1:01:49 > 1:01:52their emotions were coming out of deep freeze.
1:01:53 > 1:01:57Anyone who had come through the starvation winter had
1:01:57 > 1:01:59a lot to come to terms with -
1:01:59 > 1:02:03the heart-rending losses they had endured,
1:02:03 > 1:02:08the unimaginable things they had witnessed and, for some,
1:02:08 > 1:02:11the unthinkable things that they had done.
1:02:26 > 1:02:31So what had happened to Elena, Dima and baby Lena?
1:02:31 > 1:02:35Somehow all three survived through a mixture of sheer luck
1:02:35 > 1:02:37and outright theft,
1:02:37 > 1:02:41once Dima had perfected a method of stealing loaves of bread
1:02:41 > 1:02:44using a sharpened walking stick.
1:02:44 > 1:02:49In her diary, Elena allows herself few illusions about what
1:02:49 > 1:02:52hunger can do to a person.
1:02:52 > 1:02:57"Heroism, self-sacrifice, the heroic feat.
1:02:57 > 1:02:59"Only those who are full
1:02:59 > 1:03:03"or haven't been hungry long are capable of these.
1:03:03 > 1:03:09"As for us, we came to know a hunger that degraded and crushed us,
1:03:09 > 1:03:12"that turned us into animals.
1:03:12 > 1:03:16"May those who come after us and happen to read these lines
1:03:16 > 1:03:19"have mercy upon us."
1:03:23 > 1:03:26As the thaw set in, the city authorities dragooned
1:03:26 > 1:03:30Leningraders into a clean-up operation.
1:03:30 > 1:03:34Teams of women were ordered to remove tons of yellow snow
1:03:34 > 1:03:39encrusted with months of accumulated human filth.
1:03:39 > 1:03:41And, as the weather improved,
1:03:41 > 1:03:45the planting of vegetables became a top priority
1:03:45 > 1:03:49and some Leningraders discovered their green fingers.
1:04:17 > 1:04:19But it would take more than cabbages
1:04:19 > 1:04:23and a clean-up to restore the city's shattered morale.
1:04:23 > 1:04:27At some point, a party apparatchik called up the Radio House
1:04:27 > 1:04:31and told them to take the bloody metronome off the air.
1:04:34 > 1:04:39What the city needed was music and not just recorded music.
1:04:39 > 1:04:41As a matter of the highest urgency,
1:04:41 > 1:04:46the Radio House was ordered to bring its orchestra back from the dead.
1:05:15 > 1:05:21In the whole of Leningrad there was only one conductor now left alive,
1:05:21 > 1:05:23Karl Eliasberg.
1:05:23 > 1:05:26On 1st March, he was summoned by the Radio House committee
1:05:26 > 1:05:31and ordered to resume orchestral performances immediately.
1:05:31 > 1:05:35By this stage, only 27 musicians were left,
1:05:35 > 1:05:39only 12 of whom were even capable of playing their instruments,
1:05:39 > 1:05:44so an appeal was broadcast asking all musicians to report immediately
1:05:44 > 1:05:46to the Radio House.
1:05:46 > 1:05:51Enticed by the prospects of extra rations, many turned up,
1:05:51 > 1:05:56some with little or in fact no musical experience whatsoever.
1:05:56 > 1:05:59Once Eliasberg had weeded them out,
1:05:59 > 1:06:02he found he was still well short of the numbers required,
1:06:02 > 1:06:06so, on a bicycle requisitioned by the Radio Committee, he set out
1:06:06 > 1:06:10in search of musicians who, as the expression went,
1:06:10 > 1:06:12had fallen down the funnel.
1:06:14 > 1:06:18There are many legends surrounding Eliasberg and his extraordinary
1:06:18 > 1:06:22quest for musicians in the stricken city of Leningrad.
1:06:22 > 1:06:26But none can top the story of the drummer, Jevdet Aidarov.
1:06:29 > 1:06:32Eliasberg had been told that Aidarov had died.
1:06:32 > 1:06:36He went to the morgue and discovered the body
1:06:36 > 1:06:42and he saw that the fingers of this supposed corpse were twitching.
1:06:43 > 1:06:46"He's alive!" shouted Eliasberg
1:06:46 > 1:06:49and, before long, Aidarov was at the Radio House
1:06:49 > 1:06:51being nursed back to health on extra rations.
1:06:53 > 1:06:57I'm told that this is the very side drum that Aidarov used
1:06:57 > 1:07:01for the Leningrad Symphony when it was finally performed in Leningrad.
1:07:01 > 1:07:05Eye-witnesses said that he hammered out the invasion rhythm
1:07:05 > 1:07:07in the first movement with such ferocity, with such hatred,
1:07:07 > 1:07:10that it wasn't as if this was a musical instrument
1:07:10 > 1:07:13but a fascist's helmet.
1:07:19 > 1:07:24Bringing half-dead musicians back to life was just the start.
1:07:24 > 1:07:28Eliasberg's next miracle was to mould them into a working orchestra.
1:07:32 > 1:07:35By necessity, they were a mixed bunch
1:07:35 > 1:07:36but they had one thing in common -
1:07:36 > 1:07:40all were veterans of the siege with the experiences
1:07:40 > 1:07:43and the scars to show for it.
1:07:43 > 1:07:46Tuba player Aleksander Shartovski was a front-line soldier
1:07:46 > 1:07:49who lost his wife and son during the siege.
1:07:50 > 1:07:54Viola player Isaac Jazinevski extinguished incendiaries that
1:07:54 > 1:07:57rained down from Luftwaffe bombers.
1:07:57 > 1:08:01Flautist Galina Yershova worked in a munitions factory
1:08:01 > 1:08:05and performed for soldiers on the front line.
1:08:05 > 1:08:10Cellist Andrej Safonov scaled the golden spires of city landmarks
1:08:10 > 1:08:14to camouflage them with canvas and grey paint.
1:08:14 > 1:08:19And student Jania Matus was asked to pay for the repair of her oboe
1:08:19 > 1:08:22with a tasty dead cat.
1:08:22 > 1:08:25Viktor Kozlov, a clarinettist who played under the conductor
1:08:25 > 1:08:28after the war, and later wrote his biography,
1:08:28 > 1:08:32explains how Eliasberg turned these survivors into an orchestra.
1:09:28 > 1:09:30The first rehearsal of the reconstituted
1:09:30 > 1:09:35Radiokom Orchestra was attended by just 14 musicians.
1:09:35 > 1:09:38Some were so weak they couldn't climb the stairs to the
1:09:38 > 1:09:42rehearsal room on the first floor, so they remained downstairs
1:09:42 > 1:09:46and listened while their stronger colleagues played.
1:10:10 > 1:10:13Leningrad had got its orchestra back.
1:10:13 > 1:10:16Now what it needed was its symphony.
1:10:17 > 1:10:21Aware of the huge propaganda value the symphony had
1:10:21 > 1:10:22built during its world tour,
1:10:22 > 1:10:26party bosses in Leningrad ordered the Radio Committee to get hold
1:10:26 > 1:10:30of a copy of the score and get it into the city as soon as possible.
1:10:34 > 1:10:37On 2nd July, after a perilous flight,
1:10:37 > 1:10:42an aircraft landed in the city with a load of vital medical supplies
1:10:42 > 1:10:45and the score of the Seventh in its hold.
1:10:45 > 1:10:48The Leningrad Symphony had come home.
1:10:50 > 1:10:52And this is it.
1:10:52 > 1:10:57The full conductor's score in four volumes delivered like some
1:10:57 > 1:11:00kind of secret weapon to the besieged city.
1:11:00 > 1:11:04This is the very score that had been used at the Kuybyshev premiere.
1:11:04 > 1:11:08Now, when Eliasberg opened this score for the very first time,
1:11:08 > 1:11:11his reaction was simply to say, "This is impossible."
1:11:11 > 1:11:15Look at the demands Shostakovich is placing on his orchestra here.
1:11:15 > 1:11:18Eliasberg could see there were 115 musicians used for that premiere.
1:11:18 > 1:11:21Eight horns, six trumpets, six trombones.
1:11:21 > 1:11:25This was a piece that makes superhuman demands on any orchestra.
1:11:25 > 1:11:29Shostakovich's Seventh may be many things, but a symphony
1:11:29 > 1:11:33written for half-starved musicians to play it sure ain't.
1:13:32 > 1:13:34The first performance of the Leningrad Symphony
1:13:34 > 1:13:38in Leningrad was announced for 9th August, 1942.
1:13:40 > 1:13:43Before the concert began, one last instrument,
1:13:43 > 1:13:46not specified by Shostakovich, was added to the score.
1:13:48 > 1:13:53A massive Soviet barrage targeting German artillery positions
1:13:53 > 1:13:56and designed to ensure that the performance was not interrupted.
1:13:59 > 1:14:03And so the stage was set for the Radiokom Orchestra,
1:14:03 > 1:14:08conductor Karl Eliasberg, and for Dmitri Shostakovich's Leningrad
1:14:08 > 1:14:11Symphony in front of an audience of more than 1,000.
1:14:13 > 1:14:15No recording of the concert has survived.
1:14:15 > 1:14:18No film, not even a photograph.
1:14:18 > 1:14:21Nothing remains of the August 9th performance,
1:14:21 > 1:14:25except for the memories of those who were there.
1:14:25 > 1:14:27But these are indelible.
1:21:31 > 1:21:34APPLAUSE
1:23:25 > 1:23:30It took more than a concert to break the siege of Leningrad.
1:23:30 > 1:23:36The city had another 531 days of suffering to endure
1:23:36 > 1:23:41before the German lines were finally broken on 27th January, 1944.
1:23:43 > 1:23:45But after the war was over, it was discovered that
1:23:45 > 1:23:48the performance of the Leningrad Symphony that evening in August
1:23:48 > 1:23:51did play its part in the victory that followed.
1:23:53 > 1:23:57That night, Radio Leningrad had taken the fight directly to the
1:23:57 > 1:24:02enemy by broadcasting the concert on loudspeakers across the front line -
1:24:02 > 1:24:06a shrewd, psychological blow that found its mark.
1:24:57 > 1:25:01No-one knows for certain how many Leningraders died
1:25:01 > 1:25:06during the 872 days of the siege.
1:25:06 > 1:25:10The most recent estimates put the death toll at half a million soldiers
1:25:10 > 1:25:15and anywhere between 800,000 and a million civilians,
1:25:15 > 1:25:18making Leningrad the costliest battle
1:25:18 > 1:25:21in terms of casualties in modern history.
1:25:23 > 1:25:25In the Piskariovskoye Cemetery,
1:25:25 > 1:25:30civilians and soldiers are buried in 186 mass graves.
1:25:32 > 1:25:37The inscription declares, "No-one is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten."
1:25:39 > 1:25:41But immediately after the war,
1:25:41 > 1:25:44forgetting was precisely what Stalin demanded.
1:25:47 > 1:25:49With Nazi Germany defeated,
1:25:49 > 1:25:55Stalin was once again free to pursue his vendetta against Leningrad.
1:25:55 > 1:25:59The confession factory at the Bolshoi Dom, which had never stopped
1:25:59 > 1:26:03processing even at the height of the siege, went into overdrive.
1:26:04 > 1:26:09City bosses, their family, friends and associates were rounded up
1:26:09 > 1:26:14on concocted charges, interrogated and despatched to the Gulag,
1:26:14 > 1:26:17or the Levashovo wasteland.
1:26:20 > 1:26:21For Shostakovich,
1:26:21 > 1:26:26the end of the war also meant an unwelcome return of the past.
1:26:26 > 1:26:31In 1948, the musical hero of Leningrad fell foul of Stalin
1:26:31 > 1:26:33once again.
1:26:33 > 1:26:37Condemned as an anti-people formalist, his work was banned.
1:26:39 > 1:26:42But Shostakovich couldn't be forgotten -
1:26:42 > 1:26:44a music written to defy one form of tyranny
1:26:44 > 1:26:47could be used to resist another.
1:27:09 > 1:27:13# Dum-dum, pum-pum-pum
1:27:13 > 1:27:16# Dum-dum, dum-dum-dum
1:27:16 > 1:27:18# Dum-dum, dum-dum-dum
1:27:18 > 1:27:21# Dum-dum, dum-dum-dum. #