Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich — cellist with roots in the USSR

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was born in Baku, in Soviet Azerbaijan, on 27 March 1927, into a family of musicians. His father, the cellist Leopold Rostropovich, had been born in Voronezh; Leopold's father, Witold Rostropowicz, was a composer of Polish noble descent. Mstislav began on the piano at four and took up the cello at about seven, studying first with his parents.

At sixteen he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers in composition included Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1948, when a party decree on so-called formalist composers led to Shostakovich's dismissal from his professorships, the twenty-one-year-old left the Conservatory in protest. He later taught at the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories. Prokofiev dedicated his Symphony-Concerto to him, first performed in 1952, Shostakovich wrote for him, and Benjamin Britten composed his Cello Symphony, Cello Sonata and three Suites for Solo Cello with him in mind; in all he inspired some hundred new works. He married the Bolshoi soprano Galina Vishnevskaya in 1955.

From 1969 he and Vishnevskaya let Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn live at their dacha outside Moscow, and after Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in 1970 Rostropovich wrote an open letter on his behalf. In 1974 the couple left the Soviet Union with their two daughters, and in 1978 they were deprived of Soviet citizenship. He was unable to attend Shostakovich's funeral in 1975.

In 1977 he became music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, a post he held until 1994, and he appeared regularly as a guest conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and the London orchestras. In November 1989 he played Bach at the Berlin Wall as it was being opened. In 1990 his citizenship was restored, and that year he toured the Soviet Union with the National Symphony Orchestra.

He later divided his time between Moscow, St Petersburg and abroad, and in 2007 received the Russian Order for Merit to the Fatherland. He died in Moscow on 27 April 2007, aged eighty, and is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery, where his teachers Prokofiev and Shostakovich also lie.

Tracing the roots — Baku, Azerbaijan SSR (USSR)

Born in Baku, Azerbaijani SSR, USSR, on 27 March 1927 to the cellist Leopold Rostropovich, who was born in Voronezh; Leopold's father, Witold Rostropowicz, was a composer of Polish noble descent. Mstislav worked at the Bolshoi Theatre and the Moscow Conservatory, left the USSR in 1974 and was deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1978; it was restored in 1990.

Historical context

Soviet Union (USSR) · 1922–1991

Baku, Azerbaijan SSR (USSR). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.

Map: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

A career defined by ambition