Friday, April 27, 2007
Mstislav Rostropovich
Cellist, conductor, pianist, composer, human rights activist. His New York Times obituary is worth reading all the way through.
I'm in awe of this man. He was born in the first decade of the Revolution, grew up during the Stalin purges & Great War. He studied with two of Russia's greatest composers, Prokofiev & Shostakovich, the latter a close friend. Became one of the world's best cellists.
Married a wonderful & beautiful singer, Galina Vishnevskaya, whom he would accompany on piano in concerts. They were superstars in the Soviet Union, with privileges & perks that could make Americans envious, & were reknowned everywhere they performed. Many of the finest composers of the 20th Century composed works for Rostropovich to premiere, which he played brilliantly. Then, in the late Sixties, he & his wife gave sanctuary to novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in their country dacha home, & their troubles began. But they never backed down, & eventually had to go into exile. He was lucky. In an earlier Soviet era he would have been killed for his advocacies, which went far beyond an enthusiasm for "decadent" modern music. By then, like many great artists, he was really a citizen of the world. He even became Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. But no one was more Russian. He outlived the Soviet Union & its oppressive state cultural apparatus. Rostropovich died in Moscow, & his death was confirmed by The Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
I'm in awe of this man. He was born in the first decade of the Revolution, grew up during the Stalin purges & Great War. He studied with two of Russia's greatest composers, Prokofiev & Shostakovich, the latter a close friend. Became one of the world's best cellists.
Married a wonderful & beautiful singer, Galina Vishnevskaya, whom he would accompany on piano in concerts. They were superstars in the Soviet Union, with privileges & perks that could make Americans envious, & were reknowned everywhere they performed. Many of the finest composers of the 20th Century composed works for Rostropovich to premiere, which he played brilliantly. Then, in the late Sixties, he & his wife gave sanctuary to novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in their country dacha home, & their troubles began. But they never backed down, & eventually had to go into exile. He was lucky. In an earlier Soviet era he would have been killed for his advocacies, which went far beyond an enthusiasm for "decadent" modern music. By then, like many great artists, he was really a citizen of the world. He even became Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. But no one was more Russian. He outlived the Soviet Union & its oppressive state cultural apparatus. Rostropovich died in Moscow, & his death was confirmed by The Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography.
