Over 2000 Russians were arrested for cannibalism during the Siege of Leningrad, when German and Finnish armies surrounded the Russian city and starved its citizens for two and a half years. MT Anderson doesn’t spare the gory details in Symphony for the City of the Dead, the teen novelist’s first foray into non-fiction. It’s a look at composer Dimitri Shostakovich and the composition of his Seventh Symphony, written to raise the morale of Leningrad’s population during the siege. It was rough going: the few remaining musicians living in the city were too physically weak to rehearse. Anderson’s reading will be followed by a performance of the symphony by Boston’s Arneis Quartet.
MT Anderson
