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 Mstislav Rostropovich at the Berlin Wall in 1989 |
Mstislav Rostropovich
Arash Amini Reflects on the Great Cellist, Conductor, and Humanitarian When Mstislav Rostropovich passed away on April 27, 2007 at the age of 80, the world lost one of the greatest cellists to have ever lived. Known to most by his nickname, "Slava" (which is Russian for "Glory"), cellists and all other musicians can be thankful for his long-lasting and memorable career, which also included significant achievements as a conductor, pianist, and teacher. Slava's contribution to help expand the cello repertoire is surely unequalled and the strong friendships he made read like a who's who of heads of state, writers, and musicians, including more than a dozen of the most important composers of the 20th century. Equally notable, however, was his valiant humanitarian cause of cultural freedom and his strong stand for democratic principles, which were harshly condemned by the Soviet government. Background Born on March 27, 1927 in Baku, Azerbaijan, to parents of Russian origin, he began playing the piano at the age of four, taking lessons with his mother, a pianist, and the cello at the age of 10, taking lessons with his father—an eminent cellist who had studied with the legendary cellist Pablo Casals. At the age of 16, Slava entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied cello and piano, as well as conducting and composition. The great composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, with whom Slava developed a close and long-lasting relationship with, were among his teachers there. In 1950, at the age of 23, Slava received the Stalin Prize for the advancement of Soviet culture. Soon after, he began teaching at both the Leningrad and Moscow Conservatories, thus beginning his career as a teacher, all the while gaining more prominence in the Soviet Union as his career as a great musician escalated. With his tours of Western Europe, beginning in the 1960s, his presence became even more widespread. It was on one of these tours that he met the composer and pianist Benjamin Britten. The two remained friends and collaborators for the rest of Britten's life. It is also during the '60s that Slava's career as a conductor began, at the Bolshoi Theatre. Slava as Humanitarian In 1948, Shostakovich was dismissed from his teaching duties at the Leningrad and Moscow Conservatories—a horrible product of the ruthless oppression of the Soviet government. This led Slava, in protest, to drop out of the Moscow Conservatory. The music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev had been deemed inappropriate for Soviet culture by the Kremlin. In 1970, Slava's close friendship with the great Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was also condemned by the Soviet government in the same cruel way that Shostakovich and Prokofiev had been, led him to harbor Solzhenitsyn in his house, out of an act of pure compassion for his friend. This infuriated the government and created such a scandal that, as a result, Slava went into exile in 1974, moving to the United States with his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and their children. They were stripped of their Soviet citizenship in 1978, which was later restored in 1990. Slava's memorable performance at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 gained him even more international fame as a political activist. He received countless awards, including the Légion d'honneur of France, for his contributions to humanity, both for his music as well as for his lifelong championship of freedom. Slava also served as an ambassador for UNESCO and, in 1991, he and Vishnevskaya founded the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation to improve the healthcare and social well-being of children in the former Soviet Union. Slava and 20th Century Composers Slava's consummate artistry inspired many great composers to write for him, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Alfred Schnittke, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutoslawski, Aram Khachaturian, Astor Piazzolla, Leonard Bernstein, and Olivier Messaien. He gave the first performances of many of these and other composers' works, often with the composers accompanying him at the piano or conducting, and most of which have become centerpieces of the cello repertoire! Personal Memories of Slava My first exposure to Slava and his artistry began at a very young age. I started playing the cello at the age of four and it must have been when I was only six that I was introduced to a recording of Slava playing the Dvorák Cello Concerto. I used to ask my mother to play the record for me every single day. When it came to the part, shortly after the big opening statement, where the cello goes into 16th notes, I was so excited and started dancing around the living room. I always wonder what happened to that record, as I would have liked to find out exactly which recording of Slava's Dvorák that was, given that he recorded it several times. Shortly after this time, my parents took me to see my first live cello concert (other than my own!). We were living in Northern Virginia at the time. It was at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and Slava was playing what I remember as the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 2 with the National Symphony Orchestra. I must have been only six or seven at the time and the Shostakovich No. 2 is certainly not a terribly entertaining piece for a six or seven year old. My mother has always told me that not only did I stay awake for the whole duration of the more than 35 minute piece but that I was fascinated from the beginning to the end. I do actually remember sitting near the back of the hall, barely being able to see over the people in front of me and being very engaged with the whole performance. I wish I could say that after this I really fell in love with the cello and wanted to become a cellist but that would not be true. In truth, I had fallen in love with the cello from my very first couple of lessons, when I was four, and from then on I always said that I want to play the cello when I grow up. However, later, when I was told that Rostropovich lived in Paris and had a personal chef travel with him everywhere and that he ate really, really well, I wanted even more to become a cellist! Slava was the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington from 1977 to 1994, during which time he brought the orchestra to international fame, especially with their recordings of the Shostakovich symphonies. I always knew that Slava was the conductor of the NSO, my hometown orchestra (my parents and I later moved to the Maryland side of Washington), yet I never had the chance to go and see him conduct. My real love for Slava's playing began when I was in high school and learning the Prokofiev and Shostakovich Sonatas. My mother bought me Slava's incomparable recording of the Sonatas, with his good friend and frequent collaborator Sviatoslav Richter at the piano in the Prokofiev and with Shostakovich, himself, at the piano, in his own Sonata. From that day on, I wanted to play these incredible pieces just the way Slava did (and I still do!). Much later, I bought a CD of Slava's recording of the Britten Sonata with Britten at the piano (which also includes Claude Debussy's Sonata and Robert Schumann's Five Pieces in Folk Style), and was overwhelmed at how amazing it was—the two of them playing together almost as one. When I was studying at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Slava was on the faculty, as was his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya. Two of my friends, Wendy Warner and Daniel Lee, were his only students during this time. It remains to say that I believe that Slava never once came to Curtis, at least during the time I was there (1992 to 1997), or at least that I knew about. However, I do believe that I saw Vishnevskaya at least once, on the top floor, where the Opera Department is. It never occurred to me to ask Wendy and Danny where or how often Slava would give them their lessons but they did tell me that he taught through an interpreter, as his English was not fluent. Unfortunately, I never heard anything about what kind of teacher he was from them and so I do not have any personal experience of this. However, in May 1994, I had the incredible fortune of finally working with Slava, at the Rencontres Musicales d'Evian in Evian, France, where the Symphony of The Curtis Institute of Music was the resident orchestra for a few years. Slava was the long-time president of the festival and served as one of the conductors of the orchestra when I was there. That year's beautiful festival poster hangs framed very proudly on my wall, with Rostropovich's name on it. For the very first rehearsal of the festival, which Slava was conducting, I had the misfortune of arriving a little bit late, as I had overslept, had missed the orchestra bus to the hall, and decided to walk to the hall, trying to find it by myself. That was not the most pleasant first experience a young aspiring musician could have! I finally arrived at the hall and, in my lateness, had given up my proper seat in the section to someone else. I ended up sitting in the second-to-last chair, next to my good friend Danny Lee, who was just a young teenager then and easily able to be physically lost behind ten other cellists. At one point, toward the very beginning of our rehearsal of Shostakovich's monumental Symphony No. 10, Slava turned towards Danny and yelled, "Danushka, I no see you, I no hear you!" waving at him to move a little so Slava could see him—or at least that is what I thought he meant! I just laughed. Working on the Shostakovich with Slava was an incredible experience for me—the two had been so close that it was as if we had Shostakovich on the podium up there in front of us, conducting his own great masterwork. I will never forget how he always referred to the cellos and basses when he wanted us to do something: "celli contrabassi" all in one word; also, his frequent request for "gran cassa [bass drum] more," and reassuring and praiseworthy mention of "bravissime." I was pleasantly surprised to see that what I had heard about for so long about his cute, little dog going everywhere with him was indeed true! The dog came out with Slava to the podium for the beginning of one of the rehearsals, that is until Vishnevskaya had to come out and take the little one away! |
 Mstislav Rostropovich at the White House in 1978 "Slava set the world on fire with the brilliance of his performances and he succeeded over and over again in his unwavering mission to reveal the depth of the human soul." -- cellist Yo-Yo Ma.  Slava the conductor "Art and literature should be judged by the conscience of the creator, his peers in his field and all of the people, not by a separate bureaucracy, artificially compressing the arteries and veins of this life-sustaining circulation." -- Rostropovich testifying at a 1990 United States Senate hearing on the National Endowment for the Arts.  Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya in 1965 "The passing of Mstislav Rostropovich is a bitter blow to our culture. ... He gave Russian culture worldwide fame. Farewell, beloved friend." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, commenting to the ITAR-Tass news agency.  The Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation was founded in 1991 to improve the health care available to children in Russia and other former Soviet nations. Photo courtesy of Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation At the festival in Evian, I was also very fortunate to have played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the great Itzhak Perlman as soloist, Leonard Bernstein's Slava (written for Rostropovich), and the massive Requiem of Giuseppe Verdi. I loved how near the end of the Bernstein, it is indicated in the music that we all had to shout "SLA-VA", in rhythm. I will never forget Slava's smile when we did that! I have to admit that Slava's baton technique was not the clearest I had come across but his sheer depth of knowledge and outright passion for the music far surpassed that. Case in point was the famous trumpet fanfare in the Verdi Requiem. Slava had decided to have each of the four (I believe it is) trumpets in a different place in the balconies behind him, in the audience, in order to create an almost "surround sound" effect. After the trumpet fanfare comes some of the most involved and difficult writing of the Requiem. I will never forget how Slava, who was physically a very big man, conducted that entire wild section, half-turning his body around to conduct the trumpets while at the same time conducting the rest of the huge orchestra in front of him, flailing his arms about, all with the most intense and fiery look on his face, transforming this to his whole body and through his heart and soul. I just felt that there was no one else who could feel this music and convey these deep feelings to this young, passionate, and energetic orchestra, the way Slava did. I left the festival feeling dismayed that I had not been there in previous years, when Slava performed as soloist with the orchestra. What a treat that must have been. In 1999, Slava received the first-ever Curtis Award from The Curtis Institute, in recognition of his remarkable artistic and humanitarian achievements. Epilogue With the news emerging in 2006 that Slava was in ill health, the music world certainly had a great deal to be concerned about. In January 2007, he was admitted into a hospital in Paris, the city of one of his last homes, and then in early February to a hospital in Moscow. After a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin and, soon afterwards, treatment for intestinal cancer, Slava passed away on April 27, a month after his 80th birthday. April 27 was, coincidentally, the birth date of his teacher and friend Sergei Prokofiev. We will all miss Slava immensely. |
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Rostropovich Plays Cello Sonatas by Shostakovich
and Prokofiev