The question of re-creating the orchestra was discussed during March. In that month the situation became even more tragic: 27 people died, and most of those who remained were too famished to work. Only 16 people of the total number were able to work by the end of the first spring month. As a matter of fact, the orchestra was to be created from scratch.

One of the key issues was food provision: the leaders of the Board for Cultural Affairs guaranteed the orchestra members Category 1 ration. Without a nourishing diet the musicians were simply unable to work. The Leningrad radio announced on the air that “all musicians are requested to come to the Radio Committee”.

“On hearing the radio announcement I took my flute under the arm and went. I enter and see Karl Ilyich Eliasberg, looking dystrophic. He told me: “Do not go to the factory anymore. Now you will work in the orchestra”. We were few at first. Some people were brought in the sledge, others walked with a stick”, remembered Galina Lelukhina.

On 30 March the first rehearsal was held in the small studio of the Radio Committee. The stove was stoked, the room was full of fumes. Olga Bergholz and Georgy Makogonenko were present at the rehearsal, and gave a detailed account of their impressions in the film script which was published in the Zvezda magazine in 1945: “Nobody would call these thin dark-faced and fantastically clad people musicians, let alone an orchestra. They looked like refugees, fire victims… The conductor dressed in the ear-flap hat and fur mittens is standing before the orchestra. The musicians’ hollow eyes are directed towards him. The conductor waves his baton. Dissonant sounds, scattering and unassembled – everything is in discord, weak, harsh, false”. Many musicians were excluded from the orchestra – their hopes for additional rations and return to music were crashed. For the moment the hope to recreate the professional orchestra looked ephemeral. Eliasberg showed no pity: only those remained in the orchestra who had retained professional skills and were not terribly exhausted – there was no time for recuperation – the rehearsals were to begin at once.

There were about 40 people present at the first rehearsal. “Certainly, a full three-hour rehearsal was out of the question! We tried to play the Introduction and the Big Waltz from the Swan Lake. Forty minutes later the orchestra were let go. We could not do anything more than that on that day,” wrote Eliasberg. The search for musicians continued: some people were called off from the front lines, others were sent from the military ensembles.

The decision about performing the symphony was taken in the capital within several days after the Kuibyshev premiere. On 8 March 1942 Shostakovich telegraphed to Ivan Sollertinsky about his possible arrival in Moscow, where “the symphony is supposed to be performed”. Three days later, on 11 March, the composer wrote a letter to Isaak Glikman informing him that the conductor Samosud had already left for Moscow “to assemble an orchestra for the symphony”. Soon Shostakovich himself arrived in Moscow; on 21 March he attended the rehearsal and gave a short interview to the Komsomolskaya Pravda, where he said: “I did not suppose that my Seventh symphony, being a rather difficult composition meant to be performed by a big orchestra, will sound during the days of war. <…> I am eternally grateful both to the conductor and the orchestra, who managed to turn my vision into reality so well”. One of the rehearsals was attended by the famous satirist E. Petrov, who reminisced: “In the middle of the empty hall, somewhere in the tenth or twentieth row there was a pale and very thin man sitting, leaning on the back of the chair. He was sharp-nosed, and had light horn-rimmed glasses on, and there was a tuft of reddish hair on top, which made him look like a schoolboy. Suddenly he jumped up and, tripping over the chair, sideways moved, almost ran, towards the orchestra. He stopped at the conductor’s stand. Samosud leaned, and they got into a lively discussion. It was Dmitry Shostakovich” (Literatura i Iskusstvo, 4 April).

The united orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre branch and the All-Soviet Radio Committee was assembled for the Moscow premiere. It held 130 people, including some renown musicians: Honoured Artists of the Russian Federation violist S. Egoriev and violinist M. Karevich, Honoured Worker of arts M. Tarian, cellist S. Knushevitskiy, oboist N. N. Soloduev, trumpetist S. Eremin, clarinetist A. Volodin. There some Shostakovich’s friends among the musicians, too – violinists D. Tsyganov, V. Shirinsky and cellist S. Shirinsky, members of the Beethoven Quartet who were the first to play many of Shostakovich’s chamber instrumental compositions.

The Moscow premiere was set on 29 March 1942 in the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions. This was one of the biggest centres of social, political and cultural life of the capital which had housed major international congresses, scientific conferences, chess championships since 1920s. When the war started the building in Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 1 was turned into a military object: it became the headquarters of the NKVD separate motor rifle brigade which carried out special defense tasks in the central part of the city. Upon the completion of the Moscow battle in March-April 1942 the House of the Unions went back to its usual activities. The Moscow premiere of Shostakovich’s Seventh symphony became one of the first major cultural events which took place in this venue.

Now let us turn to the main event in the Kuibyshev period of Shostakovich’s life – the first night of the Seventh. Long before the Kuibyshev-Samara premiere, on 16 February 1942, the Pravda newspaper published Alexey Tolstoy’s article The rehearsal of the Seventh.

The only detail known about the article and how it came to be written is: the writer came to the ‘emergency capital’ on business and was invited by the composer to the rehearsal of the Seventh. Tolstoy was deeply impressed by what he heard during the rehearsal in the foyer of the Opera Theatre. On 16 February 1942, two days after his visit, the article The Rehearsal of Shostakovich’s Seventh symphony was published in the Pravda. The key phrase of the article is: ‘The Seventh symphony emerged from the conscience of the Russian people…’

Late in the evening after the triumphant premiere, “hardly had the solemn sounds of the inspiring Seventh symphony ceased”, the composer met with the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra and the theatre collective. The composer said: “Everything that needed to be expressed in the musical performance of the Seventh was achieved by Samuil Samosud and the orchestra. … Everything that I conceived was conveyed to the audience in the most talented way”.

Among the immediate responses to the first performance were the impressions of R. Glière, A. Messerer and other figures of culture. General Ignatiev, the author of the famous autobiography “50 Years in Military Service”, prophesied in the pages of the Volzhskaya Kommuna newspaper: “The victory, the moment for which is yet to come, can be heard in every sound. The Seventh symphony is Shostakovich’s biggest victory, and he managed to create the most artistic and patriotic work of the war. It will defy death”.

On 22 June 1941 Dmitry Shostakovich’s life was divided into “before” and “after”, as was the life of all people in the Soviet Union. The 34 year old composer began his work on the symphony in June 1941, and he wrote, “Never have I composed as quickly as now.” The enemy was speedily approaching Leningrad, and anxiety for the country and for the native city gave a powerful impulse to the composer’s creativity. “I was working in the conservatory," Shostakovich recalled in April 1942. “I did not take a vacation, spending days and nights in the conservatory.” Having started the symphony on 19 July, he had already finished it by 3 September. Five days later, on 8 September, Leningrad was locked in the siege. The composer unveiled his plans in the interview to the Leningrad radio, “An hour ago I finished the score for two parts of my new big symphony. If I get to write this composition well, if I manage to finish the third and the fourth movements, then I will be able to call it the Seventh symphony…” The third part of the Symphony was finished on 29 September.

The composer handed in three applications asking to be sent to the Red Army, and then to the People’s Militia, but was refused. He recalled, “For the third time I went to the People’s Militia because I thought they had forgotten about me… I was enlisted as a musical section head at the People’s Militia’s theatre… It was difficult to be a musical section head, as the section consisted of button accordions only. I kept asking to be sent to the front. I had a meeting with a commissar. He listened to my report and said that it was difficult to draft me into the Army. He felt certain that I should commit myself to writing music. Then I was off the Militia’s theatre list, and, against my will, I was to be evacuated from Leningrad.”

Shostakovich insisted to being listed to the anti-aircraft defense. Together with others he dug trenches and kept watch during the night air raids. “Sometimes I was working in the anti-aircraft gun fire and bombing. And I still kept on writing. On 25 September I celebrated my birthday. I turned 35 …”

On 1 October Shostakovich, his wife and their two children were evacuated by plane from Leningrad to Moscow. Yet, hardly had they arrived in Moscow, when Shostakovich felt an urge to return, “When your house is on fire, you have to be there and try to put it out.” On 12 October during a meeting of the Moscow theatre workers with evacuees from Leningrad in the Central House of Artists Shostakovich announced that the new symphony would be devoted to Leningrad. On 16 October the Sovetskoe Iskusstvo newspaper wrote, “The Seventh Symphony is going to be Shostkovich’s most dramatic work to date.” In those days German troops were coming close to Moscow. Shostakovich and his family were evacuated again, this time to Kuibyshev (present day Samara), where the Bolshoi troupe were also dispatched. At that critical moment Kuibyshev was viewed as an emergency capital, where, in case there was a threat of yielding Moscow to the enemy, all the Soviet supreme authoritiy bodies and foreign diplomatic missions were to be relocated.

On the banks of the Volga river, where the composer lived with his wife and two small children in very strained circumstances, the symphony’s finale was written. Upon their arrival in Kuibyshev, the Shostakovich family lived for nearly three weeks in school No. 81. They slept on the mattresses thrown on the floor, a donation from some acquaintances. And even in such conditions the composer was thinking over the final, fourth movement of the Seventh Symphony, regardless of the complaints he made in the letters to the nearest and dearest that “his nerves are somewhat wrecked.” He strove to be on the frontline – in the literal and figurative sense. Soon the family got a room in house No. 140 in Frunze street, and having made sure the family were settled, he rushed to the Military Commissariat with the request to send him to the front. However, the medical board in Kuibyshev passed the same verdict as their Leningrad colleagues: Shostakovich was found physically unfit for military service, and yet once again he received the advice to beat the enemy “with the weapon he possesses.”

A powerful impulse to finish the composition and inspiration for the theme of victory came with the news of the Soviet Army’s counter-attack outside Moscow leading to the defeat of the enemy. By that time the composer had received a two-room flat No. 13 on the ground floor in house No. 146 in the same Frunze street. Shostakovich mentions this fact in his letters to the mother who stayed behind in the besieged city and about whom Shostakovich was very worried: a letter from October, “I have been working a lot on the symphony lately, and now on the score proofs,” and a letter from January, “I have finished the Seventh symphony here.”