Mstislav Rostropovich has died

The AP reports:

Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, died Friday. He was 80. . . .

"The passing of Mstislav Rostropovich is a bitter blow to our culture," said the author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was sheltered by Rostropovich during the writer's bitter fight against Soviet authorities in the 1970s.

"He gave Russian culture worldwide fame. Farewell, beloved friend," Solzhenitsyn said, according to ITAR-Tass.

Here he is performing the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the London Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini conducting:

Comments

[JWebb]

What a shame. He studied with Prokofiev and Shostakovich as well and provided a breathing link with Russia's cultural heritage.

[Marco McClean]

Alas, another wall-beside-playing giant is dead. Who is left now to play the cello beside the so-called security walls in Israel and the walls we're building in Iraq and on the U.S. border with Mexico and the exciting wall of Rube Goldberg anti-missile missile emplacements we're putting up in Europe? Or beside the walls of the giant prison camps Halliburton is building in the American Southwest for enough money to put every high school graduate in the country through medical school?

It must be a cello. If you use anything else --a guitar, colored chalk, menstrual fluid-- you get arrested and gulaged.

I remember a story about an old man who played his cello in a town square and somehow this convinced the besieging or invading army to be nice and go away. I can't find it, though. It's not /A Cello For Mr. O/-- that ended up with a harmonica.

[JWebb]

Good Lord, Marco. Give it a rest.

[gail]

Poor Slava. He got buried twice..

[CraigC]

I love the one violinist who's trying to watch him without seeming to.

Hey, "Marco." You left out a bunch of tinfoil-hat talking points. I can understand, though, that it's tough to concentrate with all the noise going on in your head.

[gail]

I don't like to be rude or inhospitable. You're all welcome to think of me as a frivolous person, because my mind does flit happily from one subject to another when I'm not working -- that's what Scribal Terror is all about and it's the way my brain operates when I'm enjoying my leisure time -- and you're all welcome to think of me as a candy ass because I don't like to spend my leisure hours squabbling over politics, but it is my blog and I'd just as soon not be lectured to or be forced to mediate a snipe fest. There are plenty of other places on the internet where Marco can ask people to knock the chip off his shoulder and anyone who wants to can rise to the bait.

[gail]

Just scroll down one page of Scribal Terror. You've got an organ operated by the sea, a dead cellist, Russian poodles dressed up as old ladies, poodles herding sheep, Mandelbrot patterns, a moon of Saturn, Renaissance social history, manuscript restoration, phrase etymology, and Tibetan mandalas. Politics is about 10% of what I do here. That just about reflects my interest level over all, and politics as practiced on the internet would have to be measured in negative numbers. When I do politics, I limit my reflections to things that can be discussed within the limitations of a blog -- one aspect of one issue, the way something is worded, one person's perception, that sort of thing. To go beyond that in this sort of venue is to invite unsupported assertions, decontextualized provocations, and smart ass remarks. I don't think any of those things are worth my time to moderate. I spend enough time grading papers and teaching freshmen to think straight and write clearly during my working hours that I feel entitled to decline the privilege of keeping my commenters from sticking gum in each other's pony tails. Thanks. End of vent.

[gail]

After all, I could be painting, reading a book, taking a walk, or just popping pain pills for my freaking neck and having a pleasant lie down.

[james wilson]

Wow, Gail, get your point. Women are the civilizing influence, and this is bound to happen when she leaves the room.
I knew Rostopovich slightly. He was the great talent on cello I ever heard, and I heard him perform every concerto worth hearing over just two weeks, when he first came to this country. When you see, on rare occasion, an orchestra, far more cynical than you can imagine through playing war-horses innumerable times, screaming their appproval after perfomances, you are ever more certain you have just heard something beyond special. Musicians laughed and shook their heads. I've only ever seen that one other time. Rosti was tapped in to something we are not. That was obvious.

What Marco doesn't understand, or wish to, is that this man became free to live the life he wanted and deserved eventually only through the persistent efforts of people and institutions Marco detests. All the Soviet artist, without exception, were guarded in what they said during their tours of the West. Literally guarded. Yet it took nothing to read between the lines of sorrow on their faces in not speaking their minds responding to ordinary conversation. I'd seen it many a time.

[gail]

You were incredibly fortunate to have met him and to have heard him play in person. What I wouldn't give for a few moments in a concert hall listening to his music breath the same air with me.