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The Conductor

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The Conductor

By: Sarah Quigley
Narrated by: Sean Barrett
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About this listen

June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve the people into submission. Most of the cultural elite is evacuated, but the famous composer Shostakovich stays behind to defend his city. That winter, the bleakest in Russian history, the Party orders Karl Eliasberg, the shy, difficult conductor of a second-rate orchestra, to prepare for the task of a lifetime. He is to conduct a performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, a haunting, defiant new piece, which will be relayed by loudspeakers to the front lines.

Eliasberg’s musicians are starving, and scarcely have the strength to carry their instruments. But for five freezing months the conductor stubbornly drives on his musicians, depriving those who falter of their bread rations. Slowly the music begins to dissolve the nagging hunger, the exploding streets, the slow deaths...but at what cost?

Eliasberg’s relationships are strained, obsession takes hold, and his orchestra is growing weaker. Now, it’s a struggle not just to perform but to stay alive.

©2012 Sarah Quigley (P)2012 Audible Ltd Fiction Historical Fiction Musician

Critic Reviews

"Deserves to be mentioned alongside Jane Smiley, Andrea Levy and Rose Tremai." (Sunday Herald)
"Extraordinary ... a symphony on the power of love - the love of music, home, family, city.... A triumph on every level." (New Zealand Herald)
"An extraordinary period of history brought into proximity by a daring novelist.... Superbly imagined and brilliantly realised." (Lloyd Jones)

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Great Story

... with a twist of irony as the victim becomes the aggressor 7 decades on.

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