' On June 2, 1942, 20-year-old pilot Litvinov, on a light plane flying the perilous route over Nazi lines to bring first aid, also brought the manuscripts of the Shostakovich's Seventh. The plane landed in Leningrad safely, and the music score was delivered to Eliasberg. 'When I saw the symphony,' Eliasberg later told the news, 'I thought "We'll never play this. " It was four thick volumes of music. ' The Shostakovich's Seventh is a colossal work demanding battalions of strings, but what worried Eliasberg most were the voluminous arrangements for woodwind and brass in a city short of breath. The score had one hundred instruments and Shostakovich's handwritten instruction: "Dedicated to heroic people of Leningrad. All instruments must play their parts!" Eliasberg procured a list of Leningrad musicians, of whom 25 were already blacked out, dead. Those known to be alive were circled in red and ordered to report for duty. The first rehearsal was a torture: the drummer collapsed on the way to rehearsal and the leading violinist died from starvation. Those who made it to the concert hall were unable to hold their musical instruments longer than ten minutes. Eliasberg who was also extremely emaciated, spent some time in hospital in Astoria hotel and came to the rehearsals straight from the sick ward. On the score of one of the musicians of that legendary orchestra you can still see a drawing showing hollow-cheeked Eliasberg conducting his orchestra sitting on a chair. The legendary performance was broadcast live from the Bolshoi Philharmonic Hall in Leningrad, so millions of civilians and defenders of the besieged city were able to hear the powerful music. The symphony written in the conventional four movements is Shostakovich's longest, and one of the longest in the repertoire, with performances taking approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. The scale and scope of the work is consistent with Shostakovich's other symphonies as well as with those of composers considered to be his strongest influences, including Bruckner, Mahler, and Stravinsky. Much had to be done before the Leningrad premiere could take place. The Leningrad Radio Orchestra under Karl Eliasberg was the only remaining symphonic ensemble. The orchestra had survived-barely-but it had not been playing and musical broadcasts had ceased due to deadly bombardments and air-strikes by the Nazis. At the beginning of the siege, only warning signals and political appeals were broadcast. Even then, there were hours of silence because of the lack of surviving radio hosts. As for the city itself, Leningrad surrounded by the Nazis had become a living hell, with eyewitness reports of people who had died of cold and starvation lying in doorways in stairwells. "They lay there because people dropped them there, the way newborn infants used to be left. Janitors swept them away in the morning like rubbish. Funerals, graves, coffins were long forgotten. It was a flood of death that could not be managed. Entire families vanished, entire apartments with their collective families. Houses, streets and neighborhoods vanished. "The official hiatus on musical broadcasts had to end before the symphony could be performed. This happened quickly, with a complete about-face by Party authorities. Next was reforming the orchestra. Only 15 members were still available; the others had either starved to death or left to fight the enemy. Posters went up, requesting all Leningrad musicians to report to the Radio Committee. Efforts were also made to seek out those musicians who could not come. "My God, how thin many of them were," one of the organizers of the performance remembered. "How those people livened up when we started to ferret them out of their dark apartments. We were moved to tears when they brought out their concert clothes, their violins and cellos and flutes, and rehearsals began under the icy canopy of the studio. " Orchestral players were given additional food rations that was 250 grams of bread per day, because no other food was available under the siege. Before they tackled Shostakovich's work, Eliasberg had the players go through pieces from the standard repertoire-Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov-which they also performed for broadcast. Because the city was still blockaded at the time, the score was flown by night in early July for rehearsal. A team of copyists worked for days to prepare the parts despite shortages of materials. At rehearsal, some musicians protested, not wanting to waste their little strength on an intricate and not very accessible work. Eliasberg threatened to hold back the additional food rations, quelling any dissent.
