The "Leningrad" Symphony on NBC

Synopsis

During WWII, Germans encircled the city of Leningrad, creating a siege that would last 900 days and cause immense suffering for that city's residents. One resident, composer Dimtri 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 related to the American premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, subtitled "Leningrad," as a live NBC Symphony radio broadcast on today's date in 1942. The performance was dedicated to the Russian War Relief, and the NBC announcer explained how 3000 pages of the score and parts for the recently-completed symphony had been microfilmed and flown from the Soviet Union to the West via Teheran.

What the NBC announcer didn't say was that two famous conductors, Leopold Stokowski and Arturo Toscanini, had been hotly contesting who would conduct the American premiere. Toscanini had resigned from the NBC Symphony for the 1941/42 season, and Stokowski was his replacement. It was Stokowski who had lobbied for the "Leningrad" Symphony premiere, but the older conductor pulled rank, and returned to conduct the broadcast. "Don't you think, my dear Stokowski," wrote Toscanini, "it would be interesting for everybody, and yourself, too, to hear the old Italian conductor—one of the first artists who strenuously fought against Fascism—to play this work of a young Russian anti-Nazi composer?"

Friends of the composer suggest Shostakovich had more than just the Nazis on his mind, and quote him as saying: "Fascism is not simply National Socialism, and this is music about terror, slavery, and oppression of the spirit."

Music Played in Today's Program

Dimtri Shostakovich Leningrad Symphony No. 7 NBC Symphony; Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA Toscanini Edition Vol. 22

On This Day

Births

• 1906 - Norwegian composer Klaus Egge, in Gransherad, Telemark

• 1913 - American composer and pianist Peggy Stuart-Coolidge in Swampscott, Mass.;

• 1952 - English composer Dominic Muldowney, in Southhampton

• 1965 - Scottish composer and percussionist Evelyn Glennie, in Aberdeen

Deaths

• 1730 - French composer and flutist Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, age 49, in London

Premieres

• 1924 - Webern: Six Bagatelles, Op. 9, for string quartet , in Donauschingen (Germany), by the Amar Quartet

• 1973 - Penderecki: Symphony No. 1 in Peterborough Cathedral by the London Symphony, conducted by the composer

• 1976 - Richard Wernick: "Visions of Terror and Wonder" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado; This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1977

• 1996 - John Williams "Summon the Heroes," a six-minute theme for the 1996 Summer Olympics, commissioned by the Atlanta Olympic Organizing Committee

Others

• 1942 - Arturo Toscanini conducts the American premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 ("Leningrad") on a NBC Symphony broadcast; The world premiere performance by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra had occurred on March 1, 1942, in Kuybishe, the wartime seat of the Soviet government