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In Memorium: A Tribute to Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007)The eminent cellist Mstislav Rostropovich died April 27, 2007 at age 80. NEA Media Arts director Ted Libbey knew Rostropovich not only as a great 20th-century cellist, but as a friend, conductor, and advocate for human rights. Libbey shared this remembrance July 13 at the 161st meeting of the National Council of the Arts.
Mr. Chairman, members of the National Council on the Arts, thank you for giving me this opportunity to offer a tribute to the life and work of my friend, Mstislav Rostropovich. It would be bad form to eulogize such a famous figure with a dreary litany of his accomplishments, which in any case are well known. But a few words of appreciation are in order. Mstislav Rostropovich was, without question, one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century...a magnificent pianist, a passionate and insightful conductor... have I forgotten anything? Oh yes...In the opinion of many, he was the greatest cellist who ever lived. It was not only the brilliance of his playing that set him apart as a cellist, not the uniquely powerful, colorful, and beautiful sound he drew from the instrument. Nor was it the enormous personality he conveyed as a performer, or the intensity with which he communicated emotion. It was all of these things, plus the fact that he was the spirit behind the creation of nearly every important work written for cello in the second half of the 20th century. Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto and sonata; Shostakovich's two cello concertos; Benjamin Britten's suites, sonata, and Cello Symphony; concertos by Myaskovsky, Khachaturian, Bliss, Hoddinott, Jolivet, Dutilleux, Panufnik, Lutoslawski, Penderecki, and Schnittke; and solo works by many of these as well as Berio, Ginastera, and Walton. The only major concerto he couldn't take credit for was Walton's, written for Gregor Piatigorsky. Rostropovich's friendship with these composers, and the profound intellectual and spiritual rapport that developed from it – particularly with Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Britten – allowed him to become a definitive interpreter of their orchestral music when he traded bow for baton. He was also a stupendous champion of the music of Tchaikovsky. During a career of 60 years, Rostropovich played everywhere -- from the tiny village of Uelen in eastern Siberia… to jams with tribal musicians in Alaska to the south lawn of the White House...to Red Square...though, as Tony Kornheiser was fond of saying, he never made it to the World Series. Even so, in every nation where music is important, Rostropovich was celebrated. In the early years of his career, as a prince among Soviet musicians, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, was named People's Artist of the U.S.S.R., and ultimately received the Lenin Prize, the Soviet Union's highest honor.
Later, as western nations bowed down before his talent, he was hailed in France as Commander of the Legion of Honor and made Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, those nations' highest honors for a non-citizen. From the Federal Republic of Germany he received the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit, that nation's highest honor. And in this country he was feted at the Kennedy Center Honors and, in 1987, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor. There were approximately 125 other awards I could tell you about, and more than 50 honorary degrees. The last award Rostropovich received -- the Order of Service to the Fatherland -- was pinned to his chest at the Kremlin on March 27, 2007, his 80th birthday, by Vladimir Putin. A few years before that he even got an award from me at the Palais des Congrès in Cannes in January of 2000 -- though in in a photo taken at the time it looks like I'm getting the award from him. And that, I suppose, is the point. Like any true artist, Rostropovich gave more than he received, and what he gave had great value: the gift, through music, of emotional solace, of lasting joy, and of a deeper and richer humanity. Mr. Chairman, you mentioned Slava's advocacy for freedom of expression and political liberty. Outside of his work as a musician -- though I don't think it's possible to separate the man's beliefs from his artistry – this was the thing that mattered most in his life. Three occasions stand out. In 1948, following Stalin's infamous crackdown on the Union of Soviet Composers -- when Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and Myaskovsky were all censured, and Shostakovich lost his professorship at the Moscow Conservatory -- Rostropovich, then a student of Shostakovich, left the conservatory in protest. When the coterie around those composers "popped like a balloon," he was the only one to stand by them. He was just 21. In 1970, when Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize and became persona non grata in the Soviet Union, Slava and Galina sheltered the destitute novelist for four years in their dacha. In an open letter to the authorities, Rostropovich wrote: "Every person must have the right to think and express views fearlessly and independently about things that are known to him, that he has personally thought out and lived through -- and not simply to offer weak variations on an OPINION implanted in him...I am familiar with many of Solzhenitsyn's works. I like them, and I feel that he has earned through suffering the right to set down on paper the truth as he sees it." This cost Rostropovich and his wife their careers, and left them no option but to emigrate.
Finally, in 1991, when elements of the dying Soviet political and military machine staged a coup to depose Mikhail Gorbachev, Rostropovich flew to Moscow to join Boris Yeltsin and the small group of stalwarts who were defending the Russian parliament building. You remember the pictures of Yeltsin standing on top of a tank. Here's another picture, taken inside the parliament building. For three days and nights the building remained under siege, with an attack expected at any moment. Rostropovich was assigned a bodyguard, and you can see that the young man has collapsed from exhaustion after two days without sleep. Slava has put his arm around him -- to comfort him, perhaps to keep him from falling over. That item in Slava's left hand is not a musical instrument, but an assault rifle. And the look on his face...seems a compound of sadness, strain, and the thought that death may be just minutes away. The worst moment came the evening of the third day, when a gunboat steamed up the Moscow River to a position alongside the parliament. Those inside were certain the promised attack was coming. Then, the building's defenders learned the gunboat was there to protect them, not attack them. At this news, Rostropovich put on an overcoat, jammed a bottle of vodka into each pocket, and had himself hauled out over the river, by rope, to the gunboat, where he spent the night drinking with its captain. Mention of vodka reminds me that Slava had an outrageously unbuttoned sense of humor, which frequently intersected with an enthusiasm for alcohol. Once during dinner at a restaurant in Japan, Slava ordered a Scotch. When the waiter asked him if he wanted it on the rocks, Slava pretended to be scandalized and said "No, no rocks. Straight." Then, using a term from the bad old days of Stalin and Berea, he turned to me with a conspiratorial flourish and declared: "Ice geeve COMPLETE disinformation about Scotch!" If I have not said much about Rostropovich's phenomenal talent...it is because that talent was bigger than I can possibly portray in words, and because it so eloquently speaks for itself, and will continue speaking for as long as people have ears. So, let it be Slava who has the last word today. In 1991, feeling that the time had come, Rostropovich made his first and only recording of J.S. Bach's six suites for unaccompanied cello, the bedrock of every cellist's repertoire. Here, from that recording made in the Basilica of St. Madeleine, in Vézelay, is the Sarabande from Suite No. 5 in C minor:
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