1965 Cellist ROSTROPOVICH Autograph HAND SIGNED PHOTO + MAT Concert SOLTI Israel

£257.33 Buy It Now or Best Offer, £19.79 Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: judaica-bookstore ✉️ (2,805) 100%, Location: TEL AVIV, IL, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 285763184065 1965 Cellist ROSTROPOVICH Autograph HAND SIGNED PHOTO + MAT Concert SOLTI Israel.

DESCRIPTION : Up for auction is an original BEAUTIFUL , Almost 60 years old, BOLDLY HAND SIGNED PROGRAM PHOTO , Dated 1965 hand signed  AUTOGRAPH ( Autograph -Signature - Autogramme ) With a blue pen of the beloved legendary RUSSIAN SOVIET CELLIST - MSTISLAV ( Slava ) ROSTROPOVICH who is widely regarded as one of the greatest cellists of all time.   He received international acclaim for his performances of the music written by a variety of composers and many regard him as one of the greatest CELLISTS  of his time  . The HAND SIGNED PROGRAM PHOTO depicts young ROSTROPOVICH , 38 years of age , playing his CELLO . The SIGNED program PHOTO is nicely matted below a very attractive REPRODUCTION ACTION PHOTO of Slava playing his instrument.  The matted object is suitable for immediate framing or display .  ( An image of a suggested framing is presented - The frame is not a part of this sale An excellent framing - Buyer's choice - is possible for extra  $80  ). The HAND SIGNED PHOTO is being a part from a CONCERT program of the ISRAEL IPO from 1965. The whole program is a part of this sale. It can be devided and matted as is hereabove described , Or , According to the wish of the buyer be sent intact together with the MATTED reproduction ACTION PHOTO. The PHOTO PROGRAM is very richly photographed. Hebrew & English. The size of the decorative mat is around   18 x 9 " . The size of the HAND SIGNED action program photo is around 6 x 7 . The size of the REPRODUCTION action PHOTO is around 5"x 7".  Excellent condition of the MAT , The REPRODUCTION ACTION PHOTO and the HAND SIGNED program PHOTO and the whole program.     ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images) . Authenticity guaranteed.  Will be sent inside a protective rigid packaging .    

AUTHENTICITY : The AUTOGRAPH is fully guaranteed ORIGINAL HAND SIGNED by ROSTROPOVICH in 1965  , It holds a life long GUARANTEE for its AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal  & All credit cards.

SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $ 25  . Will be sent inside a protective packaging. Handling around 5-10 days after payment. 

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich[a] (27 March 1927 – 27 April 2007) was a Russian cellist and conductor. In addition to his interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works, which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since. He inspired and premiered over 100 pieces,[1] forming long-standing friendships and artistic partnerships with composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutosławski, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Norbert Moret, Andreas Makris, Leonard Bernstein, Aram Khachaturian and Benjamin Britten. Rostropovich was internationally recognized as a staunch advocate of human rights, and was awarded the 1974 Award of the International League of Human Rights. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and had two daughters, Olga and Elena Rostropovich. Contents 1 Early years 2 First concerts 3 August 1968 proms 4 Exile 5 Further career 6 Later life 7 Stature 8 Awards and recognition 8.1 Russian Federation and USSR 8.2 Other governmental awards 8.3 Honorary citizenships 8.4 Honorary degrees 8.5 Competitive awards 8.6 Other awards 9 Notes 10 References 11 Sources 12 Further reading 13 External links Early years House in Baku, where Rostropovich was born Mstislav Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, to parents who had moved from Orenburg: Leopold Vitoldovich Rostropovich [ru], a renowned cellist and former student of Pablo Casals,[2] and Sofiya Nikolaevna Fedotova-Rostropovich, a talented pianist. Mstislav's father, Leopold (1892–1942), was born in Voronezh to Witold Rostropowicz [ru], a composer of Polish noble descent, and Matilda Rostropovich (née Pule) of Belarusian descent. The Polish part of his family bore the Bogoria coat of arms, which was located at the family palace in Skotniki.[citation needed] Mstislav's mother, Sofiya, of Russian descent,[3] was the daughter of musicians.[4] Her elder sister, Nadezhda, married cellist Semyon Kozolupov, who was thus Rostropovich's uncle by marriage.[5] Rostropovich 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.[6] At the age of four, Rostropovich learned the piano with his mother. He began the cello at the age of 10 with his father. In 1943, at the age of 16, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied cello with his uncle Semyon Kozolupov, and piano, conducting and composition with Vissarion Shebalin. His teachers also included Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1945, he came to prominence as a cellist when he won the gold medal in the Soviet Union's first ever competition for young musicians.[2] He graduated from the Conservatory in 1948, and became professor of cello there in 1956. 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.[7] 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, a leading soprano at the Bolshoi Theatre.[8] Rostropovich had working relationships with Soviet composers of the era. In 1949 Sergei 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 Symphony-Concerto to him; this was premiered in 1952. Rostropovich and Dmitry 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.[citation needed] Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten in 1964 His international career started in 1963 in the Conservatoire of Liège (with Kirill Kondrashin) and in 1964 in West Germany.[citation needed] Rostropovich went on several tours in Western Europe and met several composers, including Benjamin Britten, who dedicated his Cello Sonata, three Solo Suites, and his Cello Symphony to Rostropovich. Rostropovich gave their first performances, and the two had an obviously special affinity – Rostropovich's family described him as "always smiling" when discussing "Ben", and on his death bed he was said to have expressed no fear as he and Britten would, he believed, be reunited in Heaven.[9] Britten was also renowned as a pianist and together they recorded, among other works, Schubert's Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor. His daughter claimed that this recording moved her father to tears of joy even on his deathbed.[citation needed] Rostropovich also had a long-standing artistic partnership with Henri Dutilleux (Tout un monde lointain... for cello and orchestra, Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher for solo cello), Witold Lutosławski (Cello Concerto, Sacher-Variation for solo cello), Krzysztof Penderecki (cello concerto n°2, Largo for cello and orchestra, Per Slava for solo cello, sextet for piano, clarinet, horn, violin, viola and cello), Luciano Berio (Ritorno degli snovidenia for cello and thirty instruments, Les mots sont allés... for solo cello) as well as Olivier Messiaen (Concert à quatre for piano, cello, oboe, flute and orchestra).[citation needed] Rostropovich took private lessons in conducting with Leo Ginzburg,[10] and first conducted in public in Gorky in November 1962, performing the four entractes from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Shostakovich's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death with Vishnevskaya singing.[11] In 1967, at the invitation of the Bolshoi Theatre's director Mikhail Chulaki, he conducted Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi, thus letting forth his passion for both the role of conductor and the opera.[12] August 1968 proms Rostropovich played at The Proms on the night of 21 August 1968. He played with the Soviet State Symphony Orchestra – it was the orchestra's debut performance at the Proms. The programme featured Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor and took place on the same day that the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia to end Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring.[13] After the performance, which had been preceded by heckling and demonstrations, the orchestra and soloist were cheered by the Proms audience.[14] Rostropovich stood and held aloft the conductor's score of the Dvořák as a gesture of solidarity for the composer's homeland and the city of Prague.[citation needed] Exile Rostropovich playing the Duport Stradivarius at the White House in 1978 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 21-year-old Rostropovich quit the conservatory, dropping out in protest.[15] Rostropovich also smuggled to the West the manuscript of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, emphasizing Soviet indifference to the Babi Yar massacre.[16] In 1970, Rostropovich sheltered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who otherwise would have had nowhere 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,[17] as was his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and his appearances performing in Moscow were curtailed, as increasingly were his appearances in such major cities as Leningrad and Kiev.[18] Rostropovich left the Soviet Union in 1974 with his wife and children and settled in the United States. He was banned from touring his homeland with foreign orchestras and, in 1977, the Soviet leadership instructed musicians from the Soviet bloc not to take part in an international competition he had organised.[19] In 1978, Rostropovich was deprived of his Soviet citizenship because of his public opposition to the Soviet Union's restriction of cultural freedom. He would not return to the Soviet Union until 1990.[7] Further career On December 17, 1988, Rostropovich gave a special concert at Barbican Hall in London, after postponing a trip to India for the Armenian Earthquake relief program. The event was part of an effort called Musicians for Armenia, which was expected to raise more than $450,000 from donations worldwide, including gifts from musicians, concert proceeds and film and recording rights. Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales attended the concert in the sold-out 2,026-seat concert hall.[20] On February 7, 1989, a cello concert was organized by the Armenian Relief Society and the Volunteers Technical Assistance (VTA) for the victims of the Spitak Earthquake. At the concert, Rostropovich played his favorite cello repertoire, including Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor; Haydn's cello concerti in C and D; Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto; the two cello concerti of Shostakovich, and others. The evening with Rostropovich raised awareness and helped hundreds of earthquake victims put food on their table. The concert was held at the Kennedy Center and over 2,300 were in attendance.[21] Mstislav Rostropovich with wife Galina Vishnevskaya in 1965 Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich with their daughters at home, 1 February 1959 Mstislav Rostropovich, 18 September 1959 Mstislav Rostropovich, chief conductor of U.S. National Symphony Orchestra, greets the audience in Bolshoi Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, 13 February 1990 Mstislav Rostropovich and his fans in Moscow Rostropovich and Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the celebration of Solzhenitsyn's 80th birthday, 17 December 1998 Cello festival at Kronberg Academy From 1977 until 1994, he was music director and conductor of the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. while still performing with some of the most famous musicians such as Martha Argerich, Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz.[22] He was also the director and founder of the Mstislav Rostropovich Baku International Festival and was a regular performer at the Aldeburgh Festival in the UK.[23] Memorial at Kronberg His impromptu performance during the fall of the Berlin Wall as events unfolded was reported throughout the world.[24] His Soviet citizenship was restored in 1990. When, in August 1991, news footage was broadcast of tanks in the streets of Moscow, Rostropovich responded with a characteristically brave, impetuous and patriotic gesture: he bought a plane ticket to Japan on a flight that stopped at Moscow, talked his way out of the airport and went to join Boris Yeltsin in the hope that his fame might make some difference to the chance of tanks moving in.[25] Rostropovich supported Yeltsin during the 1993 constitutional crisis and conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in Red Square at the height of the crackdown.[26] In 1993, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Kronberg Academy and was a patron until his death. He commissioned Rodion Shchedrin to compose the opera Lolita and conducted its premiere in 1994 at the Royal Swedish Opera. 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.[27] Rostropovich performed several times in Madrid and was a close friend of Queen Sofía of Spain. With wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, he founded the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation, a publicly supported non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Washington, D.C., in 1991 to improve the health and future of children in the former Soviet Union. The Rostropovich Home Museum opened on 4 March 2002, in Baku.[28] The couple visited Azerbaijan occasionally. Rostropovich also presented cello master classes at the Azerbaijan State Conservatory. Together they formed a valuable art collection. In September 2007, when it was slated to be sold at auction by Sotheby's in London and dispersed, Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov stepped forward and negotiated the purchase of all 450 lots in order to keep the collection together and bring it to Russia as a memorial to the great cellist's memory. Christie's reported that the buyer paid a "substantially higher" sum than the £20 million pre-sale estimate[29] In 2006, he was featured in Alexander Sokurov's documentary Elegy of a life: Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya.[30] Later life This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Mstislav Rostropovich" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Rostropovich's health declined in 2006, with the Chicago Tribune reporting rumours of unspecified surgery in Geneva and later treatment for what was reported as an aggravated ulcer. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Rostropovich to discuss details of a celebration the Kremlin was planning for 27 March 2007, Rostropovich's 80th birthday. Rostropovich attended the celebration but was reportedly in frail health. Though Rostropovich's last home was in Paris, he maintained residences in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, London, Lausanne, and Jordanville, New York. Rostropovich was admitted to a Paris hospital at the end of January 2007, but then decided to fly to Moscow, where he had been receiving care.[31] On 6 February 2007 the 79-year-old Rostropovich was admitted to a hospital in Moscow. "He is just feeling unwell", Natalya Dolezhale, Rostropovich's secretary in Moscow, said.[This quote needs a citation] Asked if there was serious cause for concern about his health she said: "No, right now there is no cause whatsoever." She refused to specify the nature of his illness. The Kremlin said that President Putin had visited the musician on Monday in the hospital, which prompted speculation that he was in a serious condition. Dolezhale said the visit was to discuss arrangements for marking Rostropovich's 80th birthday. On 27 March 2007, Putin issued a statement praising Rostropovich.[32] He re-entered the Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Centre on 7 April 2007, where he was treated for intestinal cancer. He died on 27 April, aged 80.[24][33][34] On 28 April, Rostropovich's body lay in an open coffin at the Moscow Conservatory,[35] where he once studied as a teenager, and was then moved to the Church of Christ the Saviour. Thousands of mourners, including Putin, bade farewell. Spain's Queen Sofia, French first lady Bernadette Chirac and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, where Rostropovich was born, as well as Naina Yeltsina, the widow of Boris Yeltsin, were among those in attendance at the funeral on 29 April. Rostropovich was then buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery, the same cemetery where his friend Boris Yeltsin had been buried four days earlier.[36] Stature Rostropovich was a huge influence on the younger generation of cellists. Many have openly acknowledged their debt to his example. In the Daily Telegraph, Julian Lloyd Webber called him "probably the greatest cellist of all time."[37] Rostropovich either commissioned or was the recipient of compositions by many composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Olivier Messiaen, André Jolivet, Witold Lutosławski, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki, Leonard Bernstein, Alfred Schnittke, Aram Khachaturian, Astor Piazzolla, Andreas Makris, Sofia Gubaidulina, Arthur Bliss, Colin Matthews and Lopes Graça. His commissions of new works enlarged the cello repertoire more than any previous cellist: he gave the premiere of 117 compositions.[1] Rostropovich is also well known for his interpretations of standard repertoire works, including Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor. Rostropovich with BACH.Bow in 1999 Between 1997 and 2001 he was intimately involved in the development and testing of the BACH.Bow,[38] a curved bow designed by the cellist Michael Bach. In 2001 he invited Michael Bach for a presentation of his BACH.Bow to Paris (7th Concours de violoncelle Rostropovitch).[39] In July 2011, the city of Moscow announced plans to erect a statue of Rostropovich in a central square,[40] and the statue was unveiled in March 2012.[41] He was also a notably generous spirit. Seiji Ozawa relates an anecdote: on hearing of the death of the baby daughter of his friend the sumo wrestler Chiyonofuji, Rostropovich flew unannounced to Tokyo, took a 1+1⁄2-hour cab ride to Chiyonofuji's house and played his Bach sarabande outside, as his gesture of sympathy—then got back in the taxi and returned to the airport to fly back to Europe. Rostropovich is included in the Russian-American Chamber of Fame of Congress of Russian Americans, which is dedicated to Russian immigrants who made outstanding contributions to American science or culture.[42] Plaque on building where Azerbaijani and Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich lived in Baku Awards and recognition Rostropovich received about 50 awards during his life, including: Russian Federation and USSR Order of Merit for the Fatherland; 1st class (24 February 2007) – for outstanding contribution to world music and many years of creative activity 2nd class (25 March 1997) – for services to the state and the great personal contribution to the world of music Medal Defender of a Free Russia (2 February 1993) – for courage and dedication shown during the defence of democracy and constitutional order of 19–21 August 1991 Jubilee Medal "60 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" Medal "For Valiant Labor. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" Medal "For the Development of Virgin Lands" Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" People's Artist of the USSR People's Artist of the RSFSR (1964) Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1955) State Prize of the Russian Federation (1995) Lenin Prize (1964) Stalin Prize (1951) Commemorative Medal for the 850th anniversary of Moscow Other governmental awards Praemium Imperiale (1993) Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class (2001)[43] Heydar Aliyev Order (Azerbaijan, 2007) Order "Independence" (Azerbaijan, 3 March 2002)[44] Order of "Glory" (Azerbaijan, 1998) Order de Mayo (Argentina, 1991) Order of Freedom (Argentina, 1994) Commander of the Order of the Liberator General San Martín (Argentina, 1994) Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold (Belgium, 1989) Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2003) Order of Francisco de Miranda (Venezuela, 1979) Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2001) Commander of the Order of the Phoenix (Greece) Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark, 1983) Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (Spain, 1985) Commander of the Order of Charles III (Spain, 2004) Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (31 August 1984)[45] Grand Officer of the National Order of the Cedar (Lebanon, 1997) Grand Officer of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas (Lithuania, 24 November 1995) January 13 Commemorative Medal (Lithuania, 10 June 1992) Commander of the Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (1999; previously Knight, 1982) Commander of the Order of Adolphe of Nassau (Luxembourg, 1991) Commander of the Order of Saint-Charles (Monaco, 1989) Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit (Monaco, November 1999)[46] Commander of the Order of the Dutch Lion (Netherlands, 1989) Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1997) Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Saint James of the Sword (Portugal) Order "For merits in the sphere of culture" (Romania, 2004) Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands awarded him the rare Medal for Art and Science (Dutch: "Eremedaille voor Kunst en Wetenschap") of the House-Order of Orange. Presidential Medal of Freedom (USA, 1987) Kennedy Center Honoree (USA, 1992) Knight of the Order of Brilliant Star (Taiwan, 1977) Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour (France, 1998; previously Commander, 1987, and Officer, 1981) Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (France, 1975) Order of Arts and Letters (Sweden) (1984) National Order "For Merit" (Ecuador, 1993) Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star (2nd class) (Japan, 2003) Sharaf Order (Order of Honor) of the Republic of Azerbaijan Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1987) Honorary citizenships Citizen of honor of Orenburg, Russia (1993) Citizen of honor of Vilnius, Lithuania (2000) Honorary degrees Honorary Doctorate, University of British Columbia (1984) Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.), Northern Illinois University (1989) Laurea ad honorem at the University of Bologna in Political Science (2006) Competitive awards Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance (1984): Mstislav Rostropovich & Rudolf Serkin for Brahms: Sonata for Cello and Piano in E Minor, Op. 38 and Sonata in F, Op. 99 Other awards Polar Music Prize (1995) Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1970) Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (1976) Sonning Award (1981; Denmark) Prince of Asturias Award (in the concord category), 1997 (jointly with Yehudi Menuhin) Konex Decoration granted by the Konex Foundation of Argentina in 2002. Wolf Prize in Arts (2004) Sanford Medal (Yale University)[47] Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music, London.[48] Gold UNESCO Mozart Medal (2007)[49] Roosevelt Institute's Four Freedoms Award for the Freedom of Speech (1992)[50] ***** Mstislav Rostropovich OverviewTracksAlbumsPhotosSimilar ArtistsEventsBiography(current section)TagsShoutsListeners Biography Born 27 March 1927 Born In Bakı, Azerbaijan Died 27 April 2007 (aged 80) Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was a Russian cellist and conductor, born March 27, 1927, in Baku USSR. He is considered one of the greatest cellists ever. First concerts Rostropovich gave his first cello concert in 1942. From 1943 to 1948, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he became professor of cello in 1956. 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 the Stalin Prize, then considered the highest distinction in the Soviet Union. At that time, Rostropovich was already well known in his country and while actively pursuing his solo career, he taught at the Leningrad Conservatory (now Saint-Petersburg) and the Moscow Conservatory. In 1955, he married Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano at the Bolshoi Theatre. His international career started in 1964 in the then West Germany. As of this date, he went on several tours in the western Europe and met several composers, including Benjamin Britten. 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. Exile Rostropovich fought for art without borders, freedom of speech and democratic values, resulting in a reprimand from the Soviet regime. His friendship with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his support for dissidents led to official disgrace in the early 1970s. He was banned from several musical ensembles and his Soviet citizenship was revoked in 1978 because of his public opposition to the USSR's restriction of cultural freedom. Rostropovich left the USSR in 1974 with his wife and children and settled in the United States. Further career His talent inspired compositions from numerous composers such as Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Prokofiev, Britten, Dutilleux, Bernstein and Penderecki. He and fellow Soviet composer Dmitri Kabalevsky completed Prokofiev's Cello Concertino after the composer's death. Rostropovich gave the first performances of both Shostakovich's cello concertos. Rostropovich introduced Shostakovich's First Concerto to London and began an association with Benjamin Britten. Britten wrote the Cello Sonata, 3 Solo Suites and the Cello Symphony with Rostropovich in mind. From 1977 until 1994, he was musical director and conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, DC. He is also the director and founder of many music festivals (Aldeburgh, Rostropovitch Festival), while still performing with some of the most famous musicians such as Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz. 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. 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 the most prestigious 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. Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, started a foundation to stimulate social projects and activities. Rostropovich Home Museum opened on March 4, 2002, in Baku, Azerbaijan. Rostropovich died in Moscow on April 27th, 2007. Rostropovich's instrument was the 1711 Duport Stradivarius, considered to be one of the greatest instruments ever made. ***** On This Day 27 March: Mstislav Rostropovich Was Born by Georg Predota March 27th, 2022 Mstislav Rostropovich Mstislav Rostropovich Mstislav Rostropovich has been called the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of all time. Armed with impeccable technique, his playing produced a unique richness of tone as he famously exploited the tonal resources of the instrument. In addition, Rostropovich was famous for inspiring and commissioning new works, “which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since.” In fact, he inspired and premiered well over 100 compositions. However, besides being an incomparable instrumentalist and all-round musician, Rostropovich also became a moral force speaking out against tyranny and injustice. He was born in Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR on 27 March 1927. He liked to tell the story that he wasn’t wanted. “My mother understood too late that she was pregnant; she cried all over the house. My parents decided that I would have to be aborted because she already had a little child. It was a joint decision. So my mother started to fight against me, but as you see, I won this war.” Rostropovich Plays Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 Play Mstislav Rostropovich“Slava,” as he would famously become known, was born into a musical dynasty that had moved from Orenburg, the birthplace of his mother. His father Leopold was a renowned cellist and teacher who had studied with Tchaikovsky‘s friend Aleksandr Wierzbilowicz, and later with Pablo Casals. His grandfather was a composer of Polish noble descent, and his mother Sofiya, daughter of musicians of Russian lineage. Her elder sister Nadezhda married the cellist Semyon Kozolupov, who was thus Rostropovich’s uncle by marriage. And let’s not forget that his sister Veronika was a violinist, and that his maternal grandmother was head of a music school. Slava grew up in Baku and he taught himself to play the piano at the age of four, undoubtedly with some instruction from his mother. He is even said to have produced his first attempts at composition at that time. He started studying the cello with his father at the age of eight, and he was found to have perfect pitch. In his early teens, the family was evacuated to the western Russian city of Orenburg, where Slava “gained his first experience performing with a small group of musicians. Rostropovich/Richter Play Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 102 Play Mstislav Rostropovich, Chief conductor of U.S. National Symphony Orchestra Rostropovich as Chief conductor of U.S. National Symphony Orchestra By the mid-1930s, the family moved to Moscow and Rostropovich first appeared in public as a soloist at the age of 13, performing the Saint-Saëns A-minor Concerto in 1942. He entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1943 to study cello with his uncle Kozolupov, piano with Nikolai Kuvshinnikov, and composition with Vissarion Shebalin. He was also able to join Shostakovich’s orchestration class. Rostropovich once said, “Shostakovich was the most important man in my life, after my father.” When he was a student, Shostakovich was dismissed from his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow in response to the 10 February 1948 decree condemning the composer for “formalist perversions and antidemocratic tendencies.” In protest, Rostropovich quit the conservatory and he also smuggle to the West the manuscript of his teacher’s Symphony No. 13, “emphasizing Soviet indifference to the Babi Yar massacre.” Around the same time, Rostropovich won competitions in Moscow and subsequently Prague and Budapest, and at the age of 23 he was awarded the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, the Stalin Prize. Rostropovich Plays Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 Play Mstislav Rostropovich, 1978 Rostropovich in 1978 By the time he obtained his PhD in 1948, Slava was recognized as one of the Soviet Union’s most brilliant instrumentalists. In addition, Rostropovich had an intense working relationship with Soviet composers of the era. In 1949 Sergei 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 Symphony-Concerto to him. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote both his first and second cello concertos for Rostropovich, who also gave their first performances. But his relationship with the Soviet State was anything but smooth. In an open, and predictably unpublished letter to Pravda, the state-run newspaper he wrote, “Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word? Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinions which has been inculcated in him.” Rostropovich Plays Britten’s Cello Suite No. 2 Play Plaque on building where Azerbaijani and Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich lived in Baku Plaque on building where Azerbaijani and Rostropovich lived in Baku In the end, Rostropovich was ready to sacrifice everything, and when he supported Alexander Solzhenitsin in the late 1960s, “he was restricted to touring inside the USSR, before being exiled with his wife in 1974. His name was expunged from scores dedicated to him, and his wife was removed from the official history of the Bolshoi Theatre, and in 1978 they were stripped of their Soviet citizenship. However, they did outlive the Soviet system, and his Soviet citizenship was restored in January 1990. Rostropovich left a legacy that is both artistic and political. For one, he leaves an extended recorded legacy as a cellist, and from the late 1960s, he developed a second career as a conductor, notably with the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, and as a guest conductor with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras. In addition, he stood up for his beliefs and fought for art without borders, freedom of speech, and democratic values. He is remembered as an artistic genius, a champion of human rights, and a consummate ambassador for music. ***** An Unforgettable Life in Music: Mstislav Rostropovich (1927–2007) Leon Botstein The Musical Quarterly, Volume 89, Issue 2-3, Summer-Fall 2006, Pages 153–163, https://doi.org/10.1093/musqtl/gdm001 Published: 17 August 2007 pdfPDF Split View Cite Permissions Icon Permissions Share Issue Section: Notes from the Editor The death of Mstislav Rostropovich in April 2007, just one month after his eightieth birthday, coincided almost exactly with the publication of Elizabeth Wilson's admiring and affectionate book on that phenomenal and charismatic musician, entitled Mstislav Rostropovich: Cellist, Teacher, Legend (London: Faber and Faber, 2007). Wilson, a devoted friend and student of Rostropovich (she studied with him between 1964 and 1971), is perhaps best known for her excellent annotated collection, now in its fine second and expanded edition, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). Wilson's remarkable command of music, notably the cello repertoire and twentieth-century Russian compositions, is equaled by an impressive mastery of the Russian language. This latter virtue is indispensable for anyone with a keen interest in either Rostropovich or Shostakovich. Both men (who were close friends) were notably less adept at foreign languages than one might have expected. In Wilson's book on Rostropovich, there are several hilarious accounts of the great cellist's maneuvering around the absence of a common language with non-Russian colleagues, notably Benjamin Britten, with whom a warm friendship and collaboration nonetheless developed. Rostropovich was one of the few instrumentalists and performers in modern times to have captured the public imagination and exerted influence beyond music alone. Many composer–performers have played significant roles in cultural history, such as Liszt and Bernstein, but their lasting legacy has been sustained largely by their compositions and prose writings. Rostropovich did not write much prose or poetry. He could, however, have easily pursued a dual career as a composer. Early in his career, having demonstrated a serious talent for composition, Rostropovich studied with Vissarion Shebalin and soaked in as much as could from his close relationships with both Shostakovich and Prokofiev. But his boundless energy and attraction to the present moment of musical communication led him to a different sort of dual career. He combined performance with teaching. The two activities provided the proper outlet for his persistent need for direct human interaction through music. His teaching was not informal. Rather, he held key appointments in the Soviet Union's leading conservatories. The stage was complemented by the classroom, and together they sustained Rostropovich's life. As Wilson's book makes evident, Rostropovich was uncompromisingly gifted. His memory was prodigious and quick. When one reads of his feats—learning new concerti in a day and shorter works in hours or performing marathon concerts and on occasion shuttling from one concert stage to another in a single evening—and then factors in the unforgettable originality, meticulousness, refinement, and inexhaustible spontaneity of his performances, one is left speechless. One can think of very few parallels. There is, of course, the example of Liszt or, closer to Rostropovich's generation, Georges Enescu. Like Enescu, Rostropovich was a fantastic pianist who not only accompanied his wife, the great soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, but was also able to play the orchestral and piano parts for the whole of the cello repertoire from memory. His command of the piano reflected the ambition Rostropovich passed on to his students: to know intimately the other parts of a composition apart from one's own line, whether in a work of chamber music or a work with orchestra, and to use the piano to explore music well beyond that written for the cello. Wilson's book is a chronological account of Rostropovich's career as performer and teacher with interludes of firsthand written testimonials from several of his protégés. Her own text is filled with generous quotes based on interviews with many witnesses. The entire volume, which does not extend beyond Rostropovich's career after 1974, the year he left the Soviet Union, offers a unified picture of the man as artist and teacher. Curiously, despite decades of dedicated teaching, no distinct Rostropovich school of cello playing emerged. That was not his ambition. Partly influenced by his own struggle to compensate for an injury to his hand in his youth, he did not believe in technical absolutes—a right and wrong way of holding the bow or using the left hand. Technique had to be adapted to fit the player, the music, and the interpretive intent. One hears often from artists who command their instrument effortlessly and flawlessly that technique must be subordinated and viewed as a natural outgrowth of an artistic point of view and expressive impulse. For those less gifted, this synthesis is easier to accept than to realize. Rostropovich found a way to teach those for whom acquiring the technical essentials was difficult so that they, too, could gain the technique necessary to express a high standard of artistry. In other words, his teaching made a real difference. Rostropovich's playing and teaching represent perhaps the most convincing and extensive example of how this oft-repeated ideal in teaching, in which the technical and the interpretive are integrated, can be achieved. Thanks to Wilson's highly readable and detailed account, one can summarize Rostropovich's approach to playing and teaching in two maxims. First, every note and every phrase in all music—good, bad, and indifferent—must be given meaning even if it seems to lack it. This requires the performer to define that meaning, by experimenting, improvising, studying the structure, and even applying helpful metaphors and analogies from outside the narrow frame of music. The meaning one finds is not necessarily stable, and each performance differs, perhaps even as a result of new audiences, occasions, and venues. Nonetheless, one must communicate meaning every time a work is played. And the meanings that can be persuasively communicated are enlarged, amended, and tested by every performance, whether in a classroom or on stage. Second, musicians must concentrate first and foremost on listening, not only to themselves, but also to others. Intense and close listening is particularly crucial when one is playing in an ensemble. Even practicing alone to facilitate dexterity or speed requires a critical ear. Without constantly listening to oneself, even when playing a scale slowly, practicing is of little use. Listening horizontally as music unfolds, let us say in a solo work from note to note, must be complemented by vertical listening, when other voices exist in a work. In sum, Rostropovich construed performance as a species of spontaneous re-composition. All the notes of a composition, no matter how perfect, required more than a faithful, note-perfect realization. For a performer to put across successfully, from the audience's point of view, a conception of structure and logic, inspired re-composition through performance is necessary. Playing the cello becomes a theatrical act, a performance art. It begins with the performer's entrance on stage, which is why Rostropovich once, in a master class, asked a student to rehearse coming out on stage over and over. From start to finish, gesture was inseparable from sound. That Rostropovich took his own advice with abandon can be seen on the many videos of his cello playing. It is therefore not surprising that Rostropovich was less interested in or attracted to the microphone and studio recording. If Glenn Gould represented the radical mid-twentieth-century modernist rejection of live performance and its theatrical rituals in favor of the presumed intimacy and minutely managed precision of modern recording, Rostropovich embodied the counterargument. For all the educational benefits and access to repertoire and performances offered by recording technology, music remained for Rostropovich a traditional art form. Its core as a social act was immune to technology. Music was, in the end, an art of performances that must take place in real time, in local spaces, with a distinct amalgam of people present. The magic of music rested in the absence of the possibility of repetition, the unpredictable and unique circumstances created by the inevitable and unremarkable non-reproducable experience of the passage of time. The recording was reduced to a mere aid to the memory of the live performance. What is striking in Mstislav Rostropovich: Cellist, Teacher, Legend is how lasting the memories of Rostropovich's performances continue to be. An inadvertent virtue of Wilson's book is that it vindicates the capacity of ordinary language to capture the deep impressions Rostropovich's playing made on those who heard him play live. In Wilson's hands, language seems sufficient to evoke for future generations the musical experience as memory. Only a marginal amount of the persuasive information on and analysis of Rostropovich's playing contained in Wilson's book derives from an analysis of his recorded legacy. His career and influence helped nudge the center of emphasis in the realm of “classical” music, which had shifted from the stage to the studio in the mid-twentieth century, back to the stage and to live performance. I was only a child when I heard him play in April 1956 in New York, but the event has stuck in my memory ever since. I had the rare pleasure of thanking him for this, more than a half century later, during his last visit to New York in the fall of 2006. Rather than apologize for the theatrical aspect of performance, Rostropovich celebrated it as an essential dimension that forced the artist to take enormous risks in the face of the public, made possible by meticulous preparation in order to actualize, in the moment, idealized versions of musical thought. His faith in the constant possibility of reinventing music in live performance made Rostropovich immune to notions of definitive readings and highly sympathetic to divergent subjective but disciplined interpretations. It also persuaded him that music must be a contemporary art, not a virtual museum of the past. Few performers have commissioned and championed as wide a repertoire of new works for any instrument as Rostropovich. He was responsible for probably half of the now standard twentieth-century repertoire for cello and orchestra, as well as a substantial body of music in which the cello is central. One thinks not only of concertos by Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but also those by Britten and Witold Lutoslawski. And then there are the unfairly neglected works, particularly the concertos by Miecyslaw Weinberg and Boris Chaikovsky. More than any cellist, even Pablo Casals, Rostropovich made it his business to popularize the cello and expand its repertoire. What Wilson's book does not do is provide a genuine scholarly biography. More time must pass before that will be possible. To Wilson's credit, she does not pretend to offer one. Instead, this book should be of particular interest to performers, students, and teachers, not only cellists but all string instrumentalists. Nonetheless, the book contains a tad too much adulation and unanimity. I suspect it was designed to be an eightieth birthday present, and one hopes Rostropovich had a chance to see it. When one puts it down, one certainly recognizes that Rostropovich was a towering artist. At the same time, Wilson describes a man who was almost too good to be true, someone who, like an ebullient, naïve child, never made a conscious mistake, never failed at anything, and never hurt anyone. One learns that as a teacher Rostropovich could be harsh, but that he always offered compensating kindness and encouragement. He adapted to the psyches and needs of all his students. He was inspiring, but not overwhelming, and consistently selfless. As a teacher, the worst Wilson accuses him of is being gone too often and making up lost time with endless sessions held in the wee hours of the morning. Though Wilson observes that he sometimes responded to students with terrifying silence, she implies that this punishment was deserved because they did not work hard enough. Even this minor lapse is mentioned only tangentially. The Rostropovich who emerges from the book is not merely a musical genius and a phenomenon as a teacher, but also a kind of saint. He was gracious to colleagues (even evil and mediocre ones), patient with bureaucrats, generous to students. A love of life and music, particularly the active making of music, overwhelmed everything else in life so that all other parts of life, private and public, fell into place benignly. He had no shortcomings, human or musical, of any consequence. Only passing reference is made of periodic suspicions about his ambition and careerism, notably the manner in which the young Rostropovich latched on to Prokofiev. The opposite impression dominates. Rostropovich extended himself even to his only rival within the Soviet Union, Daniil Shafran, who despite tours abroad in 1960 and 1964 never earned the wide recognition as a cellist that some believe he deserved. There is one cellist working today whose fame, personality, and reputation seem most like the Rostropovich Wilson evokes in her book: Yo-Yo Ma. He, too, is ebullient, a great and inspiring theatrical presence, an indefatigable performer, a fighter for the new in music (notably with his Silk Road Project), unfailingly kind, gracious, and generous of spirit, profoundly thoughtful and yet self-critical, eager to try new things from period instrument practices to so-called crossover music. Perhaps the cello draws better human beings than the piano and violin, where great artistry and flawed human character seem to live side by side with ease. To support this observation one need only contemplate the career and character of the only cellist before Rostropovich to earn a comparable place in history—Pablo Casals, who inspired and gave lessons to Rostropovich's father, Leopold. The case of Casals is instructive in the task of coming to terms with Rostropovich the man and musician. Casals also came from a family of musicians, although neither of his parents were quite as accomplished as Rostropovich's father who by all accounts was a fabulous cellist and his son's first and probably most influential teacher. Like Casals, Rostropovich also developed great skill at the piano. Both men married singers and accompanied them at their recitals. Both were inspiring teachers and commissioned a great deal of repertoire for their instrument, and both played a great deal of chamber music, some of it with world-class colleagues, Casals with Mathieu Crickboom, Jacques Thibaud, and Alfred Cortot (among others), and Rostropovich with Leonid Kogan, Emil Gilels, and Sviatoslav Richter (among others). The most telling differences were that Casals was far less theatrical and comfortable as a stage performer, and his credo regarding interpretation was far more infused with philosophical rhetoric about the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Casals was also the far more determined composer. His entire career was marked by his ambition to compose. Yet what renders a comparison between the two great cellists apt is their shared approach to musical interpretation as overwhelmingly an act of thinking like a composer. In that framework, every phrase and every sound have their place and must generate meaning within some system of semantic and syntactic logic. For both cellists, that meaning presumed the existence of a dynamic but coherent language of music that possessed a unique capacity for spiritual expression. The considerations of history and style were at best secondary. Despite Casals's impact, the cello, in contrast to the violin and piano, remained a relative newcomer to the stage as a vehicle of solo virtuosity. This made a revisionist ideology with respect to interpretation and style premature at best. Hence the contrast between Casals, who was innovative in his approach to an instrument without an extensive dialogue with past practice, and his contemporaries who were violinists and pianists. That explicit dialogue informed the powerful reformist ideals of Carl Flesch and Joseph Szigeti (against late-Romantic excesses) and Artur Schnabel. When one compares the two cellists further, one finds that although Rostropovich found comfort in religion later in life, Casals's overt spiritual quest was lifelong. Both men conducted, but Casals was never serious about it as a major career path. Rostropovich, on the other hand, spent the greater part of the last quarter century of his musical life on the podium, to great international acclaim, particularly on account of the intensity and integrity of his musicianship when performing the Russian repertoire, notably that of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. However, the reasons Casals and Rostropovich became cultural icons whose presence extended beyond the concert platform lay in their political lives and the extent to which they became symbolic of a political cause central to a generation. In Casals' case, the issue was the resistance to Fascism. Casals had been the beneficiary of royal and aristocratic patronage in the first decades of his career, during which he became an international star, traveling as far as Russia and America. He was credited with revolutionizing the playing of the cello, setting new standards, and placing the six Bach suites at the center of the repertoire, a fact that perhaps accounts for Rostropovich's relative reluctance to record them. Casals's initial political allegiance, limited to patriotism to Catalonia, its language, and people, was followed by a commitment to the ideal of a democratic Spain. After World War I, Casals turned his fame and fortune to the benefit of both causes. But with the defeat of the Republic, the advent of Franco, and the parallel successes of Mussolini and Hitler, Casals became a figure of principled resistance to tyranny. He collaborated with neither dictator and continued to criticize those nations he held complicit in the fall of the Republic. After World War II, he stood as a symbol of ethical integrity, of how a great artist can reject the seductive allure of opportunity provided by dictators and governments to use his prestige on behalf of an elusive, if not lost, cause: freedom and the conduct of politics with principles we now associate with Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms and today's language of human rights. Unlike Alfred Cortot, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, and Walter Gieseking (to varying degrees), Casals never, so to speak, danced with the devil. Although in the last decade and a half of his life Casals, having moved to Puerto Rico, relented and appeared in both England and the United States, like Picasso he never wavered in his rejection of Spain under Franco. Rather he widened his political message to one of world peace. Rostropovich's rise to the status of a cultural icon also had two phases, but they possess curious contradictions. Born in 1927, Rostropovich came of age and made his mark under the Soviet system. Although he appears, unlike Shostakovich, never to have succumbed to joining the Communist Party, Rostropovich became an official artist under Stalin and certainly under Khrushchev, a symbol of the awe-inspiring standards of high culture nurtured under the Soviet regime. He became internationally famous as a propaganda tool. This last phrase may sound harsh, but it reflects less in the way of complicity than we now, after the fall of Communism, are inclined to assume. If there were redeeming features of Soviet Communism, however minor they were in comparison to its faults, among them was its system of locating, training, and supporting musicians, performers, and composers alike. In a manner similar to the legendary investment made by postwar Iron Curtain nations in training and fielding athletes for Olympic competitions, the Soviet Union developed a system of locating and schooling musicians that transformed international standards of performance. Rostropovich was a privileged product and proponent of that system. Rostropovich's teaching strategy reflected practices and standards that could perhaps be achieved only in such a culture and with such official backing. Wilson recounts the wry comment of one of his protégés who ended up teaching in the West. The extent of the demands made by Rostropovich of his students, in terms of the pace, schedule, and scope of preparation (including mastering scores and accompaniments) and the speed and intensity of the acquisition of repertoire by memory could hardly be asked of students in the context of Western European or American conservatories. A professor at a leading Soviet institution could, without criticism, mirror the authority and control over the time and lives of pupils exercised by the state over the daily lives of its citizens. The highly engineered character of daily life in the Soviet Union lent the serious pursuit of music as a career a rare prestige in public life. Absent a consumer culture, and with censorship and the close scrutiny of private life, the concert hall and the opera house (as a place not only for opera, but also ballet) were welcome and privileged venues, attractive to a wide public because of their apparent absence of political associations. The importance of the classical concert music tradition in Soviet life was exceptional, even though the roots of significance can be located in pre-revolutionary Russian history. But there, too, music as a domestic and public art form flourished as an artistic enterprise that appeared to retain, more than the plastic arts or literature, a dimension of genuine freedom within an autocratic framework. Wilson avoids critical scrutiny of Rostropovich's initial years of success, which extended into the early 1970s. Her discretion is misplaced. There is no reason to criticize the young star who found himself in Budapest in 1953 when the news of Stalin's death was made public. As legend has it, Rostropovich eloquently expressed his sense of loss at an official gathering at the Soviet Embassy. It was not only possible but plausible for those who grew up and lived entirely under Russian Communism, as in Shostakovich's case, to place the evils and shortcomings of the regime in context and to sense an appropriate patriotic allegiance to the explicit idealism of Communism, the national cultural traditions of Russia, and the recent heroism of the Soviet Union, which under Stalin led the bloody and devastating fight against Hitler in World War II, Russia's Great Patriotic War. Furthermore, despite the Hungarian Revolution, from 1956 to 1968, the year of the Prague Spring, a Soviet citizen could sense the possibility of progress in terms of freedom as the result of liberalization and de-Stalinization. Rostropovich, Richter, and their many equally distinguished colleagues represented the best of the Soviet system. Their musical achievements were accompanied by a civic idealism about the place of music in culture and the wealth of talent within a nation that the state was prepared to support, not only in Moscow and Leningrad, but throughout the Soviet Union. Even in the early 1970s, when Rostropovich was banned from travel abroad and prevented from playing on the main stages of Russia's two dominant cities, he enthusiastically accepted his fate, which was to play in the provinces. Unfortunately, only a handful of Soviet musicians and composers earned their proper place in history as a result of the regime's restrictive policies regarding international exposure. There are dozens of composers and instrumentalists, ranging from Boris Chaikovsky and Boris Tishchenko to Natan Rachlin and Daniil Shafran, many of whom make cameo appearances in Wilson's books on Rostropovich and Shostakovich, who never gained international recognition. The existence of sound recordings made during the Soviet era might still draw our attention to those contemporaries of Rostropovich who were performers, but the wealth of music written by the better composers under Soviet rule remains in print, waiting for revival by future generations of performers. Readers of Wilson's book on Rostropovich may therefore find themselves struck by the implicit challenge in its account of the great cellist's career before 1974. Today's nations in the post-Soviet era, including Russia, Israel, member states of the European Union, and the United States, would do well to emulate the Soviet system of recruiting, training, and supporting musicians and sustaining institutions of music, from schools for children, high schools, and conservatories to chamber ensembles, orchestras, and opera companies. The second phase of Rostropovich's career as a public figure beyond music began after 1968. Until then his talent, magnetism, and charm allowed him to negotiate the system not only to his own benefit, but also to the advantage of colleagues and students (even those out of favor such as Mischa Maisky) without offending the officialdom or collaborating in a manner that compromised him or others. This was a gift of diplomacy that eluded many, including Leonid Kogan and Dmitry Kabalevsky. Rostropovich may have worked with the devil, but he never quite danced with him. His moment of rebellion, therefore, was one of genuine courage. Professionally and financially he was an exemplary beneficiary of the Soviet system. He had everything to lose within the system, even if leaving the Soviet Union would not mean, as it did for others, oblivion, loss of career, or poverty. He had no reason to take a risk by challenging the authorities in the era of Brezhnev, yet he did so, by housing Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. When his private and public support for the writer led to his being ostracized, Rostropovich asked to leave the Soviet Union, a request that was granted in May 1974. Once in the West, he not only pursued his career as a cellist but also rose to prominence as a conductor, primarily through his many years as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. He returned to Russia in 1991 to lend support to Yeltsin's coup and lived there part-time after the fall of Communism. He became a philanthropist, endeavoring to use the vehicle of private funding to preserve Russian traditions of teaching and concert life and alleviate the difficulties of the post-Soviet era in terms of poverty and health care. Rostropovich's support of Solzhenitsyn is telling. Because Wilson provides only a summary epilogue of Rostropovich's career after 1974 (the book having been written with the assumption that her subject's death was not imminent), one does not get a sense of Rostropovich's politics after 1974. But one can infer that, like many in his generation, including Solzhenitsyn, his experience within the Soviet Union led to a sharp reaction. Rostropovich seems to have had little patience with a Gorbachev-like compromise or gradualist solution. His sympathies seem to have turned back to a more traditional and religiously based Russian nationalism. At the same time, there is little evidence of sympathy on Rostropovich's part with the current return to centralism and autocracy under Putin. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, he did not demonize the West. If music offered its Soviet protagonists a rare opportunity within rigid state dictatorship for inner freedom, then freedom for the individual and free expression, once extended to the public sphere, would permit no compromise. If that became Rostropovich's credo in the last period of his life, then he properly took Casals's place as a protagonist for freedom. Rostropovich's intimate engagement with the Soviet system, like Casals's commitment to Spain between the two world wars, made the adoption of the sort of vague and ultimately unpersuasive, nearly pacifist universalism we associate with Yehudi Menuhin's role as a citizen of the world unlikely, just as it rendered implausible an imitation of the essentially apolitical roles assumed by émigré performers such as Jascha Heifetz or Artur Rubinstein (despite his flirtation with Polish patriotism and his later embrace of Israel). These comparisons highlight the fact that Casals and Rostropovich were not Jewish and therefore not pariahs in their own nations of birth. The irony is that, at its start, Rostropovich's career celebrated the best of the Soviet era; at his career's end, he was a potent opponent of its worst features. Ultimately, however, like Casals, it is as an artist that Rostropovich will be remembered. That obvious conclusion, however, hides something that is all too frequently forgotten by musicians with comparable talents. The highest level a performer can achieve, a level at which something ineffable and untranslatable but profoundly significant is communicated in the act of making music, is possible only if one's commitment to music is not circumscribed by a too-narrow construct of professionalism. If technique, the athletic part of playing an instrument, takes its place in response to an artistic intent, then the performer must emulate Rostropovich and learn to compose, think musically, improvise, play other instruments, read scores, and steep himself or herself in many divergent realizations of music. This is what Rostropovich did while he worked to perfect his double stops, his spiccato, his intonation, and his tone—which he sought to vary so that it could match the expressive range of the human voice. Beyond these daunting demands, the musician who seeks to emulate the achievements of Rostropovich or Casals must be engaged in the world, through teaching and public service, wide-ranging reading, and a tireless curiosity about the human condition. Ultimately, only a set of philosophical, political, and cultural ideals can give shape and substance to great artistry in music. For that reason, the brilliance, range, power, and elegance of Rostropovich's achievement, so poignantly and lovingly articulated in Wilson's book, inspire awe and humility. .    ebay6009 folder208

  • Condition: Excellent condition of the MAT , The REPRODUCTION ACTION PHOTO and the HAND SIGNED program PHOTO and the whole program. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images) .
  • Industry: Music
  • Signed: Yes
  • Autograph Authentication: 100% GUARANTEED AUTHENTIC - UNLIMITED RETURN RIGHT
  • Original/Reproduction: Original
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: Israel

PicClick Insights - 1965 Cellist ROSTROPOVICH Autograph HAND SIGNED PHOTO + MAT Concert SOLTI Israel PicClick Exclusive

  •  Popularity - 1 watcher, 0.1 new watchers per day, 15 days for sale on eBay. Normal amount watching. 0 sold, 1 available.
  •  Best Price -
  •  Seller - 2,805+ items sold. 0% negative feedback. Great seller with very good positive feedback and over 50 ratings.

People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive