The 'Leningrad Symphony' on NBC

Synopsis

During WWII, German troops encircled Leningrad for 900 days, a siege that caused immense suffering for that city’s residents. One of them, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, appeared on the cover of a July 1942 issue of TIME magazine, grim-faced and wearing the helmet of a Leningrad fireman.

The publicity was for the American premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad), as a live NBC Symphony radio broadcast on today’s date in 1942. The broadcast was dedicated to the Russian War Relief, and the NBC announcer explained how the score of the recently-completed symphony had been flown from the Soviet Union to the West via Teheran.

Two famous conductors, Leopold Stokowski and Arturo Toscanini, had been hotly contesting who would conduct the American premiere. The older conductor pulled rank. “Don’t you think, my dear Stokowski, it would be interesting to hear the old Italian conductor play this work of a young Russian anti-Nazi composer?” Toscanini wrote.

Friends of Shostakovich later suggested he may have had more than just the Nazis on his mind and quote him as saying: “Fascism is not simply National Socialism. This is music about terror, slavery, and oppression of the spirit.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Dimtri Shostakovich (1906-1976): Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad); NBC Symphony; Arturo Toscanini, conductor; RCA Toscanini Edition Vol. 22