Mstislav Rostropovich
cello
Mstislav Rostropovich had a lasting influence on the musical history of the 20th century – as a cellist, conductor, chamber musician and teacher. His concerts with Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Benjamin Britten and Galina Vishnevskaya remain legendary to this day. His visit to West Berlin in 1968, where he performed Dvořák’s Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Herbert von Karajan, also caused a sensation. After then, the cellist was a regular guest with the orchestra, and from 1977 also as a conductor.
Mstislav Rostropovich was born in Baku in 1927, the son of a cellist and a pianist. He received his first piano lessons from his mother at the age of four. At the age of eight, he enrolled at the Central Music School in Moscow – focusing on the cello at his father’s request – before transferring to the Moscow Conservatory two years later, where his teachers included Dmitri Shostakovich. Rostropovich won major prizes while still a student: “The professors were so pleased that they moved me straight from the second class to the fifth and final class, so I only had to study for three years instead of five.” Immediately after completing his studies, Rostropovich embarked on a meteoric career and became the leading cellist of his generation. Composers such as Britten, Dutilleux and Lutosławski dedicated many important works to him. At the same time, the musician studied conducting under Leo Ginsburg and Kirill Kondrashin. His solo career was followed by a no less sensational conducting career – despite political disputes he had with the communist rulers because of his public support for the opposition writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1974, Rostropovich left the Soviet Union, after which he was stripped of his citizenship. Three years later, he succeeded Antal Dorati as chief conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and also took over as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival, founded by Benjamin Britten. It was not until 1990 that Rostropovich returned to his homeland as part of a tour with the National Symphony Orchestra, at which point he was reissued a Soviet passport. As a conductor, he premiered numerous works, including Penderecki’s Polish Requiem and Lutosławski’s Novelette. Mstislav Rostropovich died in Moscow in 2007.
