What is the name of the person whose remains were moved to the prestigious Volkovskoye or Alexander Nevsky Cemetery?
Shostakovich scholar Laurel Fay suggests that this concert was "an event of legendary import all by itself". Journalist Michael Tumely calls it "a legendary moment in Soviet political and military history". Critic U.S. Dhuga suggests that this performance "was popularly – and, of course, officially – recognized as the prelude to actual victory over the Germans". The blockade was breached in early 1943 and ended in 1944. Eliasberg concurred with Dhuga's assessment, saying that "the whole city had found its humanity ... in that moment, we triumphed over the soulless Nazi war machine". There was no official recognition of the significance of the concert: one musician noted that afterwards "there was no feedback, nothing until 1945".Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 enjoyed a measure of popularity throughout the Western world during the war, but from 1945 it was rarely performed outside the Soviet Union. It became a point of controversy in the 1980s after Solomon Volkov's Testimony suggested it was a critique not of the Nazis, but of the Soviet government. The veracity of Volkov's account, which he claims is rooted in interviews with Shostakovich, has been debated. Other issues of contention about the symphony include whether it was inspired by the attack on Leningrad (as Soviet authorities and official accounts had asserted) or planned earlier and repurposed for propaganda, as well as its artistic merit compared to Shostakovich's other works.The première made Eliasberg a "hero of the city". Shortly after the concert, he married Nina Bronnikova, who had played the piano part. But once the siege ended and the Philharmonic returned to Leningrad, he fell from favour. The conductor of the Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky, had him fired in 1950 because he envied Eliasberg's popular acclaim. Eliasberg was a "poor and largely forgotten" travelling conductor when he died in 1978. However, at the fifty-year anniversary of the première his remains were moved to the prestigious Volkovskoye or Alexander Nevsky Cemetery, the result of a campaign by orchestra archivist Galina Retrovskaya, conductor Yuri Temirkanov, and St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Sarah Quigley fictionalized Eliasberg's wartime career in her historical novel The Conductor.Surviving performers participated in reunion concerts in 1964 and 1992, playing "from the same seats in the same hall". Shostakovich attended the first reunion concert on 27 January 1964. Twenty-two musicians and Eliasberg performed the symphony, and instruments were placed on the other chairs to represent those participants who had died since the première. The 1992 performance featured the 14 remaining survivors. The 1942 concert was also commemorated in the 1997 film The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin. There is a small museum dedicated to the event at School No. 235 in St. Petersburg, which includes a statue of Shostakovich and artefacts from the performance.
Eliasberg