Shostakovich's music to sound in UN headquarters

A concert of the orchestra of the Petersburg Philharmonia under Yuri Temirkanov and of Russia's young soloists will be held in the UN headquarters to mark the 60th anniversary of the anti-Hitler coalition's victory over Nazi Germany in May 2005. The accord to this effect was reached at the meeting of Russia's Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoi and UN Under-Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor held in New York on Monday.

"The orchestra of the Petersburg Philharmonia will perform the 7th symphony by Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975, one of the greatest composers-innovators of our time; he composed the 7th symphony while staying in Leningrad - now St. Petersburg besieged by the German Nazi troops) to commemorate the sacrifices our country made in the past war," Shvydkoi told RIA Novosti. "It is very important that this great music would be performed in the UN headquarters by Russian musicians. It will be a sign of respect for the Soviet Union, for Russia as the country which assumed the main blow of Nazism in World War II. And the performances by the young musicians in the second part of the concert will be a kind of symbol of the road into the future."

In the course of the meeting Shvydkoi also informed the UN Under-Secretary-General of the accord he had reached with Ministers of Culture of Italy and France Giuliano Urbani and Jean-Jacques Aillagon on holding in May-June 2005 an anti-Nazi film festival and a round table with the participation of outstanding European cultural figures on the issue The Struggle against Nazism in the 20th and 21st Centuries.