The 2007 Wasbe conference in Killarney gets to host a Shostakovich first on July 12. It's the premiere of a new version of his music for Mikhail Tsekhanovsky's animated film after Pushkin , The Tale of the Priest and his Servant, Balda, which the composer worked on in the 1930s.

Shostakovich was interested in the idea of a new genre, combining film and opera, and the arrangement with Tsekhanovsky was that he would write the music in advance of the work on the animation. In the event, the film was never finished and most of the completed film footage was destroyed during the siege of Leningrad. Shostakovich continued to work on the music even after the project had stalled, and was contemplating reviving his gaudy, grotesque score in the year of his death, 1975. It has since been worked on by Sofia Kentova and Vadim Bibergan, and comes to Ireland with a new animated film, and live singers as puppets, in a project from Norway, with Odd Terje Lysebo conducting the Nanset Wind Ensemble. The full background to the project is documented at www.balda-animated.blogspot.com.