75th Anniversary Season 2007/08 in the Royal Festival Hall Return to articles menu page > Jurowski in conversation: Shostakovich’s Symphony 7 > Jurowski in conversation: England and London > Vladimir Jurowski - biography > Jurowski in conversation: Shostakovich's Symphony 7 The Seventh Symphony is an explicit reaction to a specific event, the siege of Leningrad. How does it stand up when programmed, maybe years in advance, as part of an orchestral season? Do you feel at all uneasy about the fact that we can't know what the contemporary political situation will be at the time of performance? Not at all, rather the opposite. The strength of the symphony means that it's not exclusively related to the suffering of the people of Leningrad. It's a symphony, not a daily paper. It hasn't lost any of the strength of its political and humanist message. In a time when there is a lot of suffering surrounding us, this is music which can give people spiritual and emotional strength to overcome suffering, to retain the pride and the dignity of humans. The third and fourth movements have such absolute values: faith, belief, and the strength of the human spirit which can overcome anything. It's a remarkable thing that Shostakovich wrote this finale when the Soviet Union was far from even a hypothetical victory. So what he created was an idea of a victory, a huge utopia, which helped people in their suffering. It can seem quite a strange idea to British audiences, this concept of turning to art, to symphonic music, as a means of realizing a utopia in the face of adversity. Is it exclusively a Russian concept? I think, first of all, it's to do with the unique ability Shostakovich had to globalise human suffering and give it a voice. On the other hand it has to do with the unique historical situation in Russia at the time of the Seventh Symphony. But I think that having said that, it still can be seen as a piece of art which is global, not strictly national, and definitely not local. I have experienced performances of this piece in the West at which people were literally torn out of their seats by the end. It's something to do with Shostakovich's incredible capability to develop one idea, and lead it to an absolute climax, which is what he does in the finale of the symphony. Vladimir Jurowski was talking to Andrew Mellor Shostakovich's Symphony 7 is performed on Wednesday 5 March 2008 An audio sample of Shostakovich's Symphony 7 can be accessed from the performance calendar page > Return to articles menu page > Back to top >