There are doubts even today about which Leningrad Dimitri Shostakovich had in mind when he wrote his seventh symphony, the so-called "Leningrad" symphony.
THE CONDUCTOR
Sarah Quigley
Vintage
Soviet Union propagandists claimed it as Shostakovich's tribute to the citizens of Leningrad who withstood the 900-day siege which began in 1941 by the masters of 20th-century Fascism. Other very well-founded opinion claimed that since the composer began writing the score long before the Nazis invaded Russia, the work is about that other enemy of humanity who tried to destroy the city and its inhabitants, Stalin.
Sarah Quigley has assumed the traditional view, that the symphony was composed as a heroic response to the Nazi invaders, and that is a novelist's privilege. It is our privilege to read The Conductor, another fine addition to the expanding catalogue of novels with international themes by New Zealand writers.
It says something for that confidence that Quigley has approached a subject about which so much has been written, is known, and potentially involves much technical and historical material. Yet in 300 pages she manages to avoid the trap of repeating the historical record while still using as her main characters the major figures of the time, and her references to the technical details of musical composition and the score itself are sufficiently broad for most readers to grasp, including those without knowledge of classical music.
I thought at first when reading the long, somewhat slow, first half of the novel that the composer himself was the chief character, for much of the focus is on him, his character and family as he wrestles the symphony into being all the while as Leningrad is bombed to destruction around his ears. But the most heroic figure turns out to be not Shostakovich, or even his symphony, but the conductor Karl Eliasberg, who is required by the State to lead the first performance in the city, even as it is being shelled and the siege continues its grip.
He is initially portrayed as a minor figure in charge of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, a second-rate ensemble in a city filled with musical brilliance. As the siege tightens, and Shostakovich is evacuated to safety along with many other leading musical identities, it falls to Eliasberg to re-form his depleted orchestra and give the first performance in Leningrad. How this is achieved is the core of the novel.
There are various minor characters who help give life and colour to what is a well-known historical circumstance, and in most respects they enhance the story. I have doubts about some of the words Quigley puts into the mouths of children, and she rather overcooks the harassed genius characterisation of the composer.
But The Conductor is a jolly good, imaginative read; a conventional heroic novel quite moving at times and which steadily carries the reader forward to its triumphant conclusion.
An added bonus is a CD of the symphony inserted in the cover - but read the book first.
- Bryan James is the Books Editor.
