The Conductor
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
A best-selling, compelling and evocatively realised novel based on real events and figures. It has now sold into eight different countries around the world.
In June 1941, Nazi troops march on Leningrad and surround it. Hitler's plan is to shell, bomb, and starve the city into submission. Most of the cultural elite are evacuated early in the siege, but Dmitri Shostakovich, the most famous composer in Russia, stays on to defend his city, digging ditches and fire-watching. At night he composes a new work.
But after Shostakovich and his family are forced to evacuate, only Karl Eliasberg - a shy and difficult man, conductor of the second-rate Radio Orchestra - and an assortment of musicians are left behind in Leningrad to face an unendurable winter and start rehearsing the finished score of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony.
Customer Reviews
Hard to put down
I first became aware of this novel as it was read in extracts over Radio NZ in 2015.
I was intrigued to such a degree I was planning my trips between jobs to coincide with the reading times so I could listen.
A year later I've managed to get to it via iBook, and devour it over a few short bursts.
At times harrowing tragic and triumphant I was left with a feeling of satisfaction on several of the most important fronts.
The novel does suffer from jumping around a little too much (the protagonist in the title gets roughly a third coverage without his impact necessarily being shown in the other two thirds); and some historical backdrops are needlessly reintroduced giving the impression of hasty editing.
Furthermore, some of the grammatical editing was disappointing- including a different name under Sarah Quigley's photo- (electronic mistakes or as they really appear?)
All the same I would very highly recommend this novel- read it.