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| Photos courtesy of CAMI AND A GREAT CONDUCTOR as well. In this issue, we pay tribute to a living icon of music - Mstislav Rostropovich, Slava! to his friends, who turned seventy this year. For your beautiful music and for all your cultural and humanitarian contributions to the world - THANK YOU, MAESTRO! A MILESTONE A
thankful musical world celebrated this milestone year in the Maestro's
life. FanFaire was fortunate to have attended the Boston Symphony
Orchestra's concert celebration last spring. This concert marked the world
premier of a work entitled "Chanson for Cello and Orchestra" composed as a
birthday gift to Rostropovich by the young American composer Augusta Read
Thomas and conducted by BSO's Maestro Seiji Ozawa. Rostropovich in turn
honored the composer by playing the solo cello part. This work is one of
the latest additions to an ever growing list of first performances played
and/or conducted by Rostropovich - more than 60 composers make up the list
that glitters with such illustrious names as Britten and Bernstein,
Kachaturian and Prokokiev, Schnittke and Shostakovich (click HERE for partial listing).
This year also marked the release on compact disc of the "authorized" edition of his pre-1974 Soviet performances, heretofore unheard in the West. Comprising 13 CDs, the set issued through EMI, contains government recordings of his concert performances made without his consent before his expulsion from the Soviet Union. The works in the set were specially selected by him, and includes works by non-Russian composers; but especially noteworthy are the recordings of first performances of cello works written for Rostropovich himself by such great composers as Britten, Prokokiev and Shostakovich as well as by lesser known Russian composers whose works he seeks to promote today. The set, accompanied by a booklet containing commentary by Rostropovich in his own words constitute a unique historical record of Soviet musical life in that era. THE MASTER AS MENTOR AND MUSE (and "student"!) It is the measure of the greatness of the man that modern day
composers are inspired to write and dedicate their works to him - indeed
to many of them, Rostropovich is not only mentor but muse. He inspires
them by example to be sure - through his virtuoso playing, his masterful
conducting and his charismatic personality - but he also does a virtuoso
job of directly encouraging and supporting them at various stages of their
creative lives, commissioning their works and playing them before
international audiences, and more recently becoming the patron of a major
new composers' competition. Indeed he is a godsend to today's composers,
yet one can only be touched by what he has to say, rather self-effacingly,
about his camaraderie with these contemporary composers whose works he has
had to learn: "My happiest moments are when I feel I am somebody's student
again. That's a gift from the gods." Not surprisingly, Rostropovich is
also an inspiration to many younger performers. The renowned Yo-yo Ma
reveres him as do his many young proteges and the chamber music players
honored to have performed or recorded with him. To composers and
performers alike Rostropovich will always be a musical hero. THE
CELLISTOf his
greatness as an artist, there can be no question. One only has to listen
to him - live or on record - to affirm what many firmly believe, that he
is the world's greatest living cellist. Be it Bach's cello suites or his
beloved Shostakovich's concertos, Rostropovich caresses the cello with his
bow like no other. A true virtuoso, he can coax the cello to produce the
most mellifluous or the most melancholic of sounds, or jolt it to produce
the most jarring. Not one to upstage the music with grand gestures, he
plays with great authority yet always makes one feel he's playing from the
heart. If Pablo
Casals, the greatest cellist of his time, gave the then obscure cello star
billing on the world stage, Mstislav Rostropovich enhanced this legacy by
vastly expanding and enriching the cello repertory. He has recorded nearly
all known cello works and is constantly discovering or introducing new
ones. He hopes to premier 100 cello concertos before he retires.
One could say that Mstislav Rostropovich was born with music in his blood. He was born on March 27th 1927 in the city of Baku on the west shore of the Caspian Sea. His mother was an accomplished pianist and his father a distinguished cellist who had studied with Pablo Casals. He played his first cello concert at the age of thirteen under his father's direction. At sixteen he entered the Moscow Conservatory where he studied composition with the great Russian composers Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Instant fame came in 1945 when he won the gold medal in the first ever Soviet Union competition for young musicians, propelling him to center stage of Soviet cultural life. With fame came an unending string of recording engagements and foreign tours.. He first visited the United States in 1956 and in the following decades actively promoted Soviet-American cultural exchange together with the other preeminent Russian musicians of all time, violinist David Oistrakh and pianist Sviatoslav Richter. THE PIANIST It is
not as well known today that Rostropovich the cellist is also an
accomplished pianist, though it is a role he played in a supporting
capacity as accompanist to his wife, the renowned Russian soprano Galina
Vishnevskaya. Together in recital they toured the globe and made many
recordings, he as conductor or accompanist, and she as recitalist or lead
soprano of operatic performances. Their recording of Tchaikovsky's beloved
opera Eugene Onegin has been described as electric. THE MAESTRO Rostropovich the Maestro began his conducting career in the
Soviet Union in 1961. He made his debut as conductor in the United States
in 1975. Then in 1977, he became the Music Director of the National
Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC, a post he held until 1996 when he
turned over the podium to Leonard Slatkin (of St. Louis Symphony fame). In
making the orchestra his own, he transformed it into one of the country's
finest, one well worthy of its name. The Maestro continues to wield the
baton, guest-conducting with the great orchestras of the world. He
recently made his subscription-concert-conducting debut with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra in a programme of Prokokiev and Shostakovich
symphonies. It is not surprising that he is reputed to be the leading
interpreter of these Russian composers, not only were they his fellow
countrymen- to him they were both mentor and friend. The British composer
Benjamin Britten was also a close personal friend. It is to these special
friendships that he traces the great love of composers that drives him to
seek out comtemporary composers and to seek audiences for their works.
THE HUMAN RIGHTS HERO One can
blame - or thank- Brezhnev and the dark days of Soviet hegemony for
Rostropovich's extended sojourn outside of his beloved Russia. Firmly
believing in artistic freedom, he and his wife sheltered the banned
novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, allowing him to live in their dacha
outside Moscow and writing an open letter to Brezhnev protesting
government restrictions on cultural freedom. Like all human rights heroes,
they were instantly persecuted, forbidden to perform and to record, and
with a stroke of the pen became musical non-entities, their national
awards and honorific titles removed from the official records. In 1974
they were driven to exile and four years later were stripped of their
Soviet citizenship. It was during this time that Rostropovich, embraced by
theWest, became a true citizen of the world. Concert tours would once
again take him all over the world; bereft of nationality, he carried with
him in lieu of a passport only a travel document issued from Monaco.
Then in 1990 communism collapsed. Deeply attached to their native land, Rostropovich and his wife did not wait long to visit Russia. It was a triumphant visit by all accounts, recorded for showing on public television. Ever the Russian at heart, the Maestro in 1990 sought and was granted reinstatement of his citizenship. To this day, Rostropovich the humanitarian continues to lend his name and stature to worthy causes. He has staged benefit concerts in support of Azerbajian earthquake relief efforts, children's health care in Russia and the construction of homes for Russian veterans returning from the Baltic states. QUITE SIMPLY, A GREAT MAN Rostropovich is perhaps the most highly decorated man in the annals of music. The honors and awards he continues to receive fill pages (those interested - click here for listing). Yet exhibiting a true mark of greatness, he is the epitome of grace and humility both on stage and off. He fills the concert hall with his calm presence - as soon as he appears from the wings to take his place on center stage. Yet it is with an aura that makes the audience feel that something very special is about to happen. As it always does - playing the slave to the music and never the other way around, Rostropovich on stage is cello playing at its most masterful. Off stage, one is moved by the warmth and genuineness of his personality. It does not matter that one is a fellow VIP seeking to pay his respects or just a plain awed music lover, he gives each one the same giant bear hug (as only a Russian can) and a generous share of his time. One always comes away after a few precious minutes with him feeling he or she has been touched by greatness. For indeed Maestro Rostropovich is, quite simply, a great man. | ||
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