In the terrible years of Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):

Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

— Anna Akhmatova, “Instead of a Preface”, Leningrad, 1 April 1957

In her poetry and her life, Anna Akhmatova bore witness to the horrors of the Soviet regime. The poet heard the same tragic history in the works of Shostakovich: she dedicated the Soviet Edition of her Poems (1958) “To Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich, in whose epoch I lived on earth”. When poet finally met composer in 1961, they simply sat in silence for 20 minutes. (“It was wonderful,” recalled Akhmatova.) This project re-imagines the meeting of poet and composer in a staged reading of Akhamatova’s poems with interspersed with selected musical works by Shostakovich, scaled in miniature for a duo of violin and accordion.

Premiered 28 June 2011 at the Cornelia Street Cafe, New York, NY. With Jennifer van Dyck, Maria Tucci reading the poems of Anna Akhmatova, and Tanya Kalmanovitch (violin/viola) and Borey Shin (accordion/piano) performing works of Dmitri Shostakovoch. Paul Hecht, Director. Tanya Kalmanovitch, Musical Director.