It is deeply symbolical that on 100-year anniversary of machine works – Strela production association - the informal anthem of Leningrad the "Evening song" better known on the first line "The City over Free Neva..." will be heard this Friday performed by the Orenburg chamber choir under the leadership of the honored worker of arts of the Russian Federation professor Olga Serebriyskaya history of the plant evacuated to Orenburg at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War in July of the 41st, is inseparably linked with city history on Neva.

AND HOW THE SONG HAS APPEARED?

The song is written in a year of the 260 anniversary of the city. The composer Vasily Pavlovich Solovyyov-Sedoy and the poet Alexander Dmitrievich Churkin have acted as authors. Both have been closely connected with Leningrad: I was born Solovyyov-Seda here and very long I lived, Churkin from 24 years served as the commander of a platoon, then lived and worked. Both were in Leningrad in the first months of the Great Patriotic War, then have composed the well-known song "Evening on raid. Alexander Dmitrievich has even worried the first blockade winter then he has been in a serious condition taken out to Arkhangelsk.
After war the composer and the poet have continued to live and work in Leningrad.

The 60th old friends have decided to write the song devoted to their hometown to peace. To everyone was what to remember, at everyone life was eventful, at the same time both Solovyyov-Seda, and Churkin were experts. As a result one of the most touching Soviet songs and one of the best-known songs about the city on Neva has turned out.

Mark Naumovich Bernes, just those years the repertoire enduring the next wave of popularity, filling up with new songs and promoting their distribution in the people became the first and most famous performer of "An evening song". Subsequently "The city over free Neva" was sung by many famous performers.

Already in Soviet period "The evening song" became the informal anthem of Leningrad, to this day remains much more popularly than the official anthem of St. Petersburg.