An orchestra of ghosts plays for survival while the NKVD watches the conductor.
Season 1 • Episode 8
LatestLeningrad, spring 1942. After the first winter of the siege, the conductor of the Grand Symphony Orchestra of the Radio Committee receives an important government task — to perform Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in the besieged city. It seems impossible — there are only a few musicians left of the orchestra: someone died of hunger, someone went to the front, and someone went missing. But the concert must take place and thunder all over the world, so that both friends and enemies can hear: "Leningrad is alive!" NKVD officer Anatoly Seregin was seconded to help the orchestra's leader Karl Eliasberg.
Acting
Guskov's Eliasberg crumbles magnificently under impossible pressure.
Production
Frozen Leningrad recreated with haunting, lived-in detail.
Score
Shostakovich's Seventh becomes a character — defiant, terrified, alive.
Creator
Aleksandr Kott
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The real 1942 Leningrad performance happened with a radio pickup orchestra of starving survivors — many collapsed during rehearsal.
Shostakovich's Seventh was already famous globally; this series interrogates whether the concert was genuine resistance or Soviet myth-making.
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