Who was Rostropovich?<\/h2>\n
Rostropovich was the most influential cellist of any era and one of the greatest cellists of all time<\/a><\/strong>. His legacy is astonishing: he premiered nearly 200 works in his lifetime, many commissioned by or written for him, and raised the cellistic bar with his powerful, virtuosic technique.<\/p>\n Rostropovich is primarily thought of as the man who changed the history of 20th-century cello playing. His physical aptitude for his chosen instrument was apparent to all who saw him play and, as the cellist himself admitted, \u2018God gave me two good things: my hands and my memory.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n His large, sculpted hands were ideally suited for the cello; his fabulous memory was a gift from nature, but he trained it so that he could memorise instantly, and perform everything (new works, too) without music \u2013 his feat of learning Shostakovich<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Cello Concerto No. 1 from memory in three days belongs to the annals of legend. <\/span><\/p>\n But hands and memory were not enough to account for the cellist\u2019s incredible achievements. In his desire to promote the cello to the same level of popularity as the piano and violin, he cajoled and inspired composers to write for his instrument. <\/span><\/p>\n In learning a new work, his identification with the composer\u2019s concept was so great that Shostakovich admitted that Rostropovich had become \u2018the co-author of the works created for him.\u2019 All this was won through a dynamic energy which fuelled a motor that seemed never to stop \u2013 he seemed to live three lives simultaneously\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n It all started in 1927, when Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbaijan. Today, the family house has been converted into a lovingly tended museum \u2013 the earliest photo on exhibit shows the infant Slava using his father\u2019s cello case as cradle, as if his destiny as a great cellist was settled.<\/span><\/p>\n As a toddler, the young Slava would imitate his father\u2019s cello-playing with two broomsticks, by the age of three he could pick out tunes on the piano and within two years had composed his first pieces. His father, Leopold Rostropovich, a brilliant musician, was aware of his son\u2019s special talents but waited until he was eight before starting him on the cello. <\/span><\/p>\n The family moved from Baku to Moscow for the sake of the children\u2019s education. Slava did not attend Moscow\u2019s specialist music schools, but studied with his father at a civic school. He progressed rapidly, and at the age of 13 made his orchestral debut in the town of Slavyansk playing Saint-Sa\u00ebns<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s First Concerto. <\/span><\/p>\n At the start of World War II the family was evacuated to Orenburg where Leopold died suddenly in June 1942. Slava was devastated. Yet he realised that his father had already imparted all he needed for a professional career: an overall knowledge of musical literature, the ability to play the piano and compose, discipline and imagination. <\/span><\/p>\n When the 13-year-old Slava had expressed his desire to conduct, his father had advised him to \u2018wait until you can earn the respect of fellow musicians with your cello playing.\u2019 In fact Rostropovich was an internationally celebrated cellist when he first conducted an orchestra in 1962 (in a Shostakovich programme). <\/span><\/p>\n The shock of losing his beloved father forced Slava to \u2018become a man at the age of 15\u2019. He took over his father\u2019s teaching duties (his pupils were mostly older than him), and participated in collective concerts in return for extra rations. In the spring of 1943, he returned to Moscow with his sister and Mother and enrolled at the conservatoire to study cello with Semyon Kozolupov and composition with Shebalin and Shostakovich. He finished the course in three years instead of five, graduating as gold medallist. It was then that he formed the lifetime habit of working not only by day but by night, somehow managing on three hours\u2019 sleep. <\/span><\/p>\n Even before graduating, Rostropovich won the prestigious All Union Competition of Performers. His early success was confirmed by further victories at cello competitions in Budapest and Prague. Already from the start of his performing career, Rostropovich set himself a series of tasks and projects. His stated aims to win popularity for the cello and to create a new repertoire for it turned out to be a lifetime\u2019s undertaking. <\/span><\/p>\n Slava\u2019s early contact with Shostakovich and Prokofiev<\/a><\/strong> made him more aware than ever of the importance of artistic innovation. \u2018What were cellists doing in Mozart\u2019s time?\u2019, he often asked, \u2018They were sleeping! They should have been pestering Wolfgang to write for our instrument!\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n So, not wanting to be accused of sleeping himself, Slava set about convincing the Soviet Union\u2019s best composers to compose for cello. The first work written for him, at the age of 21, was Myaskovsky<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Cello Sonata No. 2. Prokofiev attended the premiere, and the following year he too wrote a cello sonata, which he asked Rostropovich to perform with pianist Sviatoslav Richter. <\/span><\/p>\n All this coincided with Russia\u2019s campaign against formalism in music, which brought disgrace to both Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Slava\u2019s sense of outrage led him to swear loyalty to his life-long heroes, although he didn\u2019t escape criticism himself and was censured for refusing to play in concerts for the military in East Germany. <\/span><\/p>\n Prokofiev now went on to revise his 1938 cello concerto, and invited Slava to help him. The result was the Concerto No. 2, which was given its premiere by Rostropovich in 1952 with Richter conducting (his only such foray away from the piano). Further revisions led to the final version, the Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra, premiered only after Prokofiev\u2019s death. <\/span><\/p>\n It was the first great masterpiece for cello and orchestra written for Rostropovich, who believed it started a kind of chain reaction. Partly under the influence of Prokofiev\u2019s work, Shostakovich wrote his Cello Concerto No. 1 in 1959 and went on to compose five more works for Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. <\/span><\/p>\n In 1960, at the London premiere of the First Cello Concerto, Shostakovich introduced Rostropovich to Benjamin Britten<\/a><\/strong>. A close friendship and artistic partnership ensued, which resulted in Britten composing five splendid works for cello, not without some playful bullying on Slava\u2019s side. The Cello Sonata was premiered at the 1961 Aldeburgh Festival, which in turn inspired Rostropovich to found the first music festival in the Soviet Union, in 1964 in the town of Gorky.<\/span><\/p>\nWhy was Rostropovich important?<\/h2>\n
![\"Getty](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/24\/2023\/08\/Rostropovich-playing-the-cello-f678366.jpg?quality=90&resize=592%2C413\" "\\"Mstislav")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>When was Rostropovich born?<\/span><\/h2>\n
When did Rostropovich <\/span>start playing the cello?<\/h2>\n
Rostropovich and the Soviet composers<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n