Mstislav Rostropovich was born on March 27, 1927 and died on April 27, 2007. He is known as one of the most influential cellists in history. From 1977 until 1994, he was musical director and conductor of the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, while still performing with some of the most famous musicians such as Martha Argerich, Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz. Rostropovich has also been a frequent participant at the Aldeburgh Festival in the UK and is the founder and directory of the Rostropovich Music Festival.

Rostropovich began learning the piano from his mother at age four. She was a talented pianist in her own right and was able to give him lessons herself. At age 10, he decided to switch to the cello and studied under his father, an accomplish cellist. Between 1943 and 1948, he attended the Moscow Conservatory, eventually becoming a cello professor in 1956. He first burst onto the music scene in 1945, winning a gold medal in the first Soviet music competition for younger musicians.

Mstislav Rostropovich was persecuted by the Soviet government for his beliefs regarding free speech and democracy. In 1948, while attending the Moscow Conservatory, his teacher Dmitri Shostakovich was dismissed from his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow. Rostropovich, who was 21 at the time, left the Conservatory and dropped out to protest the move. Later on, he sheltered political refugee Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his own residence, despite the consequences if they got caught. This relationship with Solzhenitsyn eventually led to his being decreed an official disgrace by the government. He and his wife were prohibited from touring out of the country and he was restricted to a recital tour of only small towns in Siberia.

He was forced to leave the Soviet Union in 1974 as a political refugee. Rostropovich and his family moved to the United States in search of freedom. He had been banned from several ensembles in the Soviet Union, eventually having his citizenship revoked in 1978. Despite this, he supported Boris Yeltsin's illegal shelling of the Russian parliament during the 1993 constitutional crisis. He was also known to be friendly with Vladimir Putin, which seems to contradict his freedom-loving values.

Rostropovich and his wife began their own foundation to focus on social issues and create activities in their homeland of Azerbaijan. Among the programs started by the foundation include a public vaccination initiative and the Rostropovich Home Museum in Baku. Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya visited Azerbaijan occasionally. Rostropovich also presented cello master classes at the Azerbaijan State Conservatory. In addition to his social programs, Rostropovich has been a major influence on an entire generation of cellists.

Rostropovich's unexpected public performance at the fall of the Berlin Wall gained him additional fame and led to the Russian government restoring his citizenship in 1990. He has also received awards from all over the world, along with honorary doctorates from a number of prominent universities. He has been a freedom fighter throughout his life, battling for freedom of speech in both politics and the arts.

Originally posted 2008-11-11 05:43:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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