TRACKLISTING
Symphony No.7 in C major, op.60 “Leningrad”
ut majeur · C-Dur
1 I Allegretto
2 II Moderato (poco allegretto)
3 III Adagio
4 IV Allegro non troppo
Kirov Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
Valery Gergiev

ABOUT THIS SACD
Valery Gergiev’s third SACD release for 2003, with a piece ideally suited to surround sound presentation (4.1 mix). The live concert brought together two of Gergiev’s orchestras — the Kirov and the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
As with all existing Decca/Philips SACD’s, this is a hybrid disc, offering CD compatibility.
Shostakovich began work on his Seventh Symphony in September 1941 at a time when Leningrad was under siege and over 600,000 people perished. Shostakovich endured these terrible conditions until he finally agreed to be evacuated to Moscow a month later. By then he had completed the first three movements of the work and being evacuated once more, this time to Kuibyshev, he completed the Symphony in December of that year.
The first performance of the work was given in the city where the work was completed on 5 March 1942 by the Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre (they had earlier been evacuated to Kuibyshev); a Moscow performance soon followed on 29 March and Leningrad heard the work for the first time on 9 August 1942. A performance was given by Sir Henry Wood and broadcast by the BBC on 22 June 1942 (on the occasion of the first anniversary of Russia’s entry into the war) — this had been made possible by a microfilm of the work which had been smuggled out of Russia — and the United States heard the work before Leningrad when Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony in a broadcast on 19 July 1942.
Numerous performances were given in the United States during the 1942–43 concert season and until the end of the 1940s the work enjoyed great popularity. The 1950s saw a decline in interest in the work and it is only in the 1960s that it regained popularity and to become a regular part of concert seasons given by many orchestras throughout the world.