Rostropovich, Mstislav

Born Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, March 27, 1927, in Baku, Soviet Union; died of intestinal cancer, April 27, 2007, in Moscow, Russia. Cellist, pianist, and conductor. Russian cellist Mstislav Ros-tropovich was one of leading luminaries in twentieth-century classical music. Renowned for his virtuosity on the cello, Rostropovich played with some of the world’s top orchestras and later in life conducted a few of them, too. He was also an out-spoken figure during the repressive totalitarian era of Soviet history, who risked his livelihood and indeed his own life to speak out against injustice.

Born in 1927, Rostropovich—called “Slava” by his friends and family—was born in the Azerbaijani city of Baku into a musically gifted family. His mother, Sofia, was a pianist, and her mother had been director of a music school; on his father’s side, Rostropovich was a third-generation cellist, taking up the instrument himself at the age of ten after some training on the piano. Rostropovich’s talents were nurtured enough to allow him to make his professional debut with an orchestra at the age of 13. From 1943 to 1948 he studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and began writing his own compositions with two of his teachers, Dmitiri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

In 1955, Rostropovich married Galina Vishnevskaya, a soprano, and the pair gave well-attended and critically acclaimed concert recitals. His fame reached international proportions, and he was allowed to travel abroad for performances in New York City and London, which required a certain compliance with official Soviet propaganda; however, he ran afoul of authorities in the late 1960s when he gave his support to dissident writer Alexander Solzhen-itsyn, who wrote of the Soviet labor camp system that warehoused thousands of political dissidents in The Gulag Archipelago and other works. Rostropov-ich and his wife allowed Solzhenitsyn to stay at their dacha, or country vacation cottage, for four years. Frustrated by the treatment of Solzhenitsyn— who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970—Rostropovich wrote an open letter to Pravda, the official state newspaper. He questioned the government’s interference in the arts, wondering “why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word?” New York Times writer Allan Kozinn quoted him as writing in the letter, which was not published but brought Rostropovich and his wife years of personal trouble.

Rostropovich was banned from traveling abroad for the next several years, and found that even his Soviet concert engagements were restricted. Finally, in 1974, he and Vishnevskaya were allowed to travel abroad, but comments he made during the trip prompted Soviet officials to revoke their citizenship. The couple spent the next several years in exile in the West, traveling on special Swiss documents because they were technically stateless persons. From 1977 to 1994, he served as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington D.C., and was an occasional guest conductor with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras.

The end of the Soviet Union, beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, began the process of homecoming for Rostropovich and his wife, and he became a staunch supporter of Russia’s first post Communist leader, Boris Yeltsin. The return to his homeland was even the subject of a documentary film, Soldiers of Music: Rostropovich Returns to Russia. He and his wife established the Rostropovich Foundation, which provided medical care to children, and he continued to record essential works from the classical repertoire, with his cello interpretations of Bach and Dvorak considered to be definitive recordings of each.

Rostropovich retired from performing in public with his cello in 2005. Two years later, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin honored an 80year-old Rostrop-ovich in a special birthday ceremony with the Order of Service to the Fatherland medal. He died a month later, on April 27, 2007, at a Moscow hospital, after a long battle with intestinal cancer. Survivors include Vishnevskaya and their daughters, Olga and Elena. In the world of classical music, Rostropovich was a towering figure, respected as much for his talent as for his moral fortitude. He once testified before the U.S. Senate on National Endowment for the Arts, and commented on controversies over funding for the arts. “I have been a victim of censorship—both as a musician and as a person,” Los Angeles Times writer Chris Pasles quoted him as saying. “The United States, with its great number of diverse ethnic and religious groups, must preserve in an untouchable state the right of each person to express himself.” Sources: Chicago Tribune, April 28, 2007, sec. 3, p. 7; Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2007, p. B12; New York Times, April 28, 2007, p. A1, p. A13.

—Carol Brennan