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Title: The Conductor

Author: Sarah Quigley

Narrator: Sean Barrett

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-17-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

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.

Eliasbergs 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?

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

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)

Members Reviews:

A Powerful Study In Characterisation

Set during the siege of Leningrad, Quigley's powerful and enthralling novel focuses on the character of Karl Eliasberg, the conductor who managed to assemble an audience of half-starved musicians from the city's desperate inhabitants and coax from them a performance of Shostakovich's newly-composed seventh symphony. This performance, broadcast on loudspeakers to defenders and assailants alike, would come to stand for the resilience of the Leningrad people under the most extreme privation. Eliasberg is a man tortured by lack of confidence and low self-esteem. Yet in in the pursuit of a task so utterly demanding that there is scarcely time for him to drag his mother's corpse to the frozen cemetery, and no time at all to tell his friends and colleagues of her death, he manages to find a redemptive strength and purpose.

All the characters in this novel are powerfully drawn - they are, after all, individuals under the most extreme stress, inhabiting the very margins of existence; and behind them lurks the overwhelming personality of Leningrad, a city where bombs and artillery fall like rain and where the melting snow of Spring reveals dead bodies that have been partly cannabalised by the starving inhabitants. Despite its often cerebral concerns, this novel manages to be a real page turner and it is marvellously read by Sean Barrett. I was scarcely able to think about anything else until I reached the end.

One of my best ever books

Would you listen to The Conductor again? Why?

Yes. I don't normally but because this is so well written and contains a great deal of historical fact I will probably go back to it. Not only for the brilliance of the writing but to remind myself of aspects of this history. Sarah Quigley's portrayal of all her characters was brilliant. Her prose is exquisite. Descriptive, realistic, sparing nothing of the horrors of war but depicting the strength of human spirit.