Conductor

June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve the people into submission. Most of the cultural elite have 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 via loudspeakers to the front line... Number 1 in New Zealand for twenty weeks, 'The Conductor' is a profoundly moving story of music,