Payare & Thibaudet, Saint-Saëns & Shostakovich

Come enjoy a pre-concert talk covering highlights and backstories of this program, one hour before concert-time.

Guest speaker for this weekend: Jeffrey Malecki, USD Director of Bands and Chair of Music Department.

For this classical music concert, drinks purchased inside Jacobs Music Center should only be enjoyed in the lobbies pre-concert or during intermission, and should not be brought inside the concert hall.

Composer Dmitri Shostakovich

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN C MAJOR, "LENINGRAD"

Composed: 1941
Length: 80 minutes
Orchestration: flutes (including piccolos and alto flutes), oboes, English horn, clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, six trombones, tuba, timpani, string, and a diverse selection of percussion instruments.

On June 21, 1941, Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of Russia – and specified to his generals that it would “have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness.” In this he was as good as his word – over the next four years twenty million Russians would be killed. Dmitri Shostakovich heard the news that Saturday afternoon while on his way to a soccer double-header, and his life was transformed along with his nation’s. When his attempt to enlist in the army was rejected, he contributed to the war effort by writing patriotic songs and marches and joined the firefighting brigade at the Leningrad Conservatory. They did not have long to wait – the Germans began shelling Leningrad on September 1, and that siege, one of the most horrifying in history, would last almost three years and kill nearly a million residents of the city.

Even before Nazi shells began to fall on the city, Shostakovich had set out on a vast musical project – on July 19 he began a symphony written in response to the invasion. It would be the longest of his fifteen symphonies, the most famous, and the most notorious. He completed the huge first movement on August 29 as the German army approached, had the second done on September 17, and completed the third twelve days later, on the 29th. 

"[My Seventh Symphony is dedicated] to our struggle with fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, and to my native city, Leningrad."

- Dmitri Shostakovich

By this time, Leningrad had been completely cut off, and Shostakovich and his wife and children were flown over enemy lines to Moscow on October 1. Along with many other Soviet artists, they were then evacuated to Kyubishev, 600 miles east of Moscow, and it was there that he completed his Seventh Symphony on December 27. A few weeks after the premiere, which took place in Kyubishev on March 5, 1942, Shostakovich called the war the struggle “between culture and barbarity, between light and darkness” and dedicated the Seventh Symphony “to our struggle with fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, and to my native city, Leningrad.”

- Excerpt of program notes by Eric Bromberger

For Jacobs Masterworks concerts, only children ages five years and older will be allowed into the concert hall. These children must have a ticket and be able to sit in an un-accompanied seat.

This concert is made possible, in part, through the generous support of

Ace Parking has provided a DEDICATED JACOBS MUSIC CENTER PARKING PRE-PURCHASE PAGE for upcoming events at JMC.