Rhythmic marches and aggressive percussion, echoes of bombardments and sirens: in his Seventh Symphony, Shostakovich evokes the terror of war.

When Leningrad was besieged by the Germans from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944, Shostakovich was there building barricades and digging antitank trenches around the city. But on 19 July, he began to write his symphony: a great work immortalising his experience of war. He would later explain, ‘I wrote my Seventh Symphony, the “Leningrad”, very quickly. I couldn’t not write it. War was all around. I had to be with the people. I wanted to create the image of our country at war, capture it in music.’ In the end, Leningrad never fell to the Germans. But the siege cost the lives of thousands of people.

That bloody and dark episode in the Second World War was transposed by Shostakovich into a work that is as powerful as it is poignant.

Flagey, Brussels Philharmonic