Mstislav Rostropovich
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Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich KBE (Russian: Мстисла́в Леопо́льдович Ростропо́вич, Mstislav Leopol'dovič Rostropovič, IPA: [rəstrɐ'pɔ̝vʲɪ̝ʨ]), (March 27, 1927 – April 27, 2007), known to close friends as “Slava,” was a Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, USSR, to ethnic Russian parents who moved there from Orenburg.[1] His father, Leopold, was also partly of Belarusian-Polish noble descent.[2] That part of his family bore the Bogorya coat of arms, which was located at the family palace in Skotniki, Masovian Voivodeship. He grew up in Baku and spent his youth there. During World War II his family moved back to Orenburg and then in 1943 to Moscow.[3]
At age of four Rostropovich learned the piano with his mother, a talented pianist. He started the cello at the age of 10 with his father, who was also a renowned cellist and former student of Pablo Casals.[4]
From 1943 to 1948, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he became professor of cello in 1956. He entered the Moscow Conservatory at the age of 16, and studied not only the piano and the cello, but also conducting and composition. Among his teachers were Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. In 1945 he came to prominence as a cellist when he won the gold medal in the first ever Soviet Union competition for young musicians.[4]
[edit] First concerts
Rostropovich gave his first cello concert in 1942. He won first prize at the international Music Awards of Prague and Budapest in 1947, 1949, and 1950. In 1950, at the age of 23 he was awarded what was then considered the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, the Stalin Prize.[5] At that time, Rostropovich was already well known in his country and while actively pursuing his solo career, he taught at the Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg) Conservatory and the Moscow Conservatory. In 1955, he married Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano at the Bolshoi Theatre.[6]
Rostropovich had working relationships with Soviet composers of the era. In 1949 Prokofiev wrote his Cello Sonata in C, Op. 119, for the 22-year old Rostropovich, who gave the first performance in 1950, with Sviatoslav Richter. Prokofiev also dedicated his Sinfonia Concertante for cello to him; this was premiered in 1952. Rostropovich and Dmitri Kabalevsky completed Prokofiev's Cello Concertino after the composer's death. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote both his first and second cello concertos for Rostropovich, who also gave their first performances.
His international career started in 1964 in what was then West Germany. Rostropovich went on several tours in Western Europe and met several composers, including Benjamin Britten. Britten dedicated his Cello Sonata, three Solo Suites, and his Cello Symphony to Rostropovich, who gave their first performances. In 1967, he conducted Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi, thus letting forth his passion for both the role of conductor and the opera.
[edit] Exile
Rostropovich fought for art without borders, freedom of speech, and democratic values, resulting in harassment from the Soviet regime. An early example was in 1948, when he was a student at the Moscow Conservatory. In response to the 10 February 1948 decree on so-called 'formalist' composers, his teacher Dmitri Shostakovich was dismissed from his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow; the then 21-year-old Rostropovich quit the Conservatory, dropping out in protest. In 1970, Rostropovich sheltered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who otherwise had nowhere else to go, in his own home. His friendship with Solzhenitsyn and his support for dissidents led to official disgrace in the early 1970s. As a result, Rostropovich was restricted from foreign touring, as was his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and he was sent on a recital tour of small towns in Siberia.
Rostropovich left the Soviet Union in 1974 with his wife and children and settled in the United States. He was banned from several musical ensembles in his homeland, and his Soviet citizenship was revoked in 1978 because of his public opposition to the Soviet Union's restriction of cultural freedom.[5] However, he later supported his friend Russian President Boris Yeltsin's illegal shelling of the democratically elected Russian parliament during the 1993 constitutional crisis (Rostropovich conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in Red Square at the height of the crackdown),[7] and was also on friendly terms with Vladimir Putin.
[edit] Further career
From 1977 until 1994, he was musical director and conductor of the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, while still performing with some of the most famous musicians such as Martha Argerich, Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz.[8] He was also the director and founder of the Rostropovich Music Festival and was a regular performer at the Aldeburgh Festival in the UK.[9]
His impromptu performance during the fall of the Berlin Wall as events unfolded earned him international fame and was shown on television throughout the world.[10] His Russian citizenship was restored in 1990, although he and his family had already become American citizens.
Rostropovich received many international awards, including the French Legion of Honor and honorary doctorates from many international universities. He was an activist, fighting for freedom of expression in art and politics. An ambassador for the UNESCO, he supported many educational and cultural projects.[11] Rostropovich performed several times in Madrid and was a close friend of Queen Sofía of Spain.
Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, started a foundation to stimulate social projects and activities. The couple funded a vaccination program in Azerbaijan. The Rostropovich Home Museum opened on March 4, 2002, in Baku.<sup id="cit