Photo credit: mos.ru (CC BY 4.0)
Exactly 80 years ago, foreign listeners first got acquainted with the legendary Symphony №7 by Dmitry Shostakovich. On the first anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, the symphony was performed in London, and almost a month later (July 19, 1942) the work of the Soviet composer was performed in New York, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta reports.
Curator of the ''Seventh Symphony. Score in Memory'' project, which included an exhibition, a conference and a concert, Yulia Kantor, said that the first foreign listeners of the symphony were diplomats from many countries who got acquainted with Shostakovich’s work in March 1942 during its first performance in Kuibyshev.
The symphony quickly gained fame, and the best conductors in the world sought to perform this work. Premieres in London and New York were prepared with the mediation of Soviet diplomatic representatives in Great Britain and the USA.
The performance of the symphony was a huge success. Charlie Chaplin, Yehudi Menuhin and other world celebrities of that time congratulated Shostakovich. According to Yulia Kantor, the 7th Symphony made an important contribution to the decision of the Western allies to open a second front.
Russkiy Mir
