I'm assuming you mean 'The Conductor' by Sarah Quigley? That's the one I read, about the siege of Leningrad and the real-life conductor Karl Eliasberg who kept the orchestra playing through the famine. The main thread follows his brutal struggle to assemble what's left of his musicians and rehearse Shostakovich's 'Leningrad' Symphony under impossible conditions—freezing halls, musicians dying on their feet, constant shelling. It's less a traditional plot and more a stark, moving portrait of artistic defiance as a form of human survival.
Quigley doesn't shy away from the horrific details of the blockade, which makes the moments of music cutting through the silence so powerful. The plot hinges on whether the performance will even happen, but the real tension is in watching people decide if creating beauty matters when you're literally starving. The ending, with the actual concert broadcast across the front lines, gave me chills. It's a heavy read, but it sticks with you.