Tuesday 4 February, 7.30pm – 9:30pm on Zoom

A 2 hour Explore Class special. In 1941, the Nazis instigated a massacre of more than 30,000 Jews at a ravine near Kiev in Ukraine. In the subsequent years, they tried to hide the evidence and the Soviet regime, motivated by its own anti-semitism, was equally happy to see the atrocity forgotten. Twenty years later the poet Yevtushenko spoke up, and his poem Babi Yar inspired Shostakovich to write a symphony with the same name. In a special extended session, we will explore that symphony and the history that surrounds its conception and first performance.