Shostakovich Sonata No.2 Mov1 and 2. Valentina Lisitsa

We all wonder from time to time how things look on “other “ side“ , but resign to the thought that nobody came back from “there“ to tell us how things are. With a few exceptions... Dante had created his own , albeit imagined , Inferno. Shostakovich descended a real inferno, lived through it and came out alive to tell the story , to bear a testimony to the hell on earth. What else can you call it when people -- bright , thinking , loving people -- millions of them - are sentenced to living on 125 grams a day of 50% sawdust bread ration ( and only those able-bodied or well-connected ) , then to eating their pets and pests, belts and shoes ( with scraped off the walls wallpaper paste being an exquisite delicacy ) , then -- their dead , and then -- their living... This September ( 8th- 21st ) marks 70th anniversary of beginning of Siege of Leningrad, one of the deadliest and darkest episodes in the history of European civilization (if you can still call it a “civilization“). This magnificent city rightly