TOWARDS the end of his life, whenever Dmitri Shostakovich visited East Berlin he would stay at the flat of Thomas Sanderling.
The friendship between Sanderling - who is in the territory as guest conductor for two Hong Kong Philharmonic concerts this weekend - and the famous Russian composer goes back to the 50s when Shostakovich, himself persecuted during the Stalinist hell, helped Sanderling's father to escape the wrath of the party.
Kurt Sanderling, a leading conductor who for many years was the music director of the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Philharmonic, had been put on 'sabbatical' by the Stalinists, who wanted to remove him altogether.
According to Thomas Sanderling, it was Shostakovich who interceded to let his father return to the orchestra virtually unscathed by the Stalinist terror.
'The regime wanted to use Shostakovich as they wanted to use every great artist - to further their own goals. And he was under tremendous pressure . . . but whenever possible he used his own situation to help others.' A quiet, modest man who has a habit of thinking carefully before he answers any question, Sanderling was reluctant to describe his memories of the composer - who died in 1975 - saying at first it was 'too personal'.
'He was a genius,' he said simply. 'He was a great human being and he loved people . . . not in the way that Leonard Bernstein 'loved people' but in the way that he suffered with the people that suffered.