Shostakovich's symphony played by a starving orchestraIn the summer of 1942, Leningrad was starving. It had been under siege and bombardment by German forces for nearly a year. And yet an orchestra managed to perform a new symphony by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and broadcast it across the city. When conductor Karl Eliasberg received instructions to rehearse Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony he had a problem. After a performance the previous Dece
