Classical Music
Rostropovich: a gracious, genuine living legend

By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music credit

	"It has been a fantastic life," says cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, 77.
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This is one time when that overworked phrase "living legend" is perfectly accurate.

Mstislav Rostropovich — cellist, conductor, pianist, man of music — has had some of the greatest names in contemporary music lining up to compose for him. He has premiered works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Britten, Lutoslawski and countless others: 135 cello works, in fact, composed specifically for him. As a conductor, during his long directorship of the National Symphony Orchestra and his guest-conducting of the world's great orchestras, Rostropovich has premiered 85 more works that were composed in his honor.

The London Times called him "the world's greatest living musician." This is the man who forged deep friendships with Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Pablo Casals. This is the man who took on the Soviet Union, befriending and sheltering the great dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the tormented composer Shostakovich. The USSR stripped Rostropovich of his citizenship in 1974, and the cellist didn't return until a triumphant visit with the National Symphony in 1990. In August 1991, Rostropovich impetuously flew — without a visa — in an unheralded dash to Moscow to join those in the Russian White House who were resisting the attempted coup. For this, he was presented with the State Prize of Russia.

Here in Seattle, the 77-year-old maestro conducts the Seattle Symphony twice (the second performance is at 8 tonight in Benaroya Hall, with the Fifth Symphonies of both Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky), and at 8 p.m. tomorrow he takes up the cello as soloist with Christian Knapp and the orchestra in two concertos (Haydn C Major and Saint-Saens No. 1; for tickets, call 206-215-4747).

This is a killer schedule. Few concert cellists are performing at a high caliber — or performing at all — in their late 70s, much less keeping a schedule like this one. How does Rostropovich do it?

Up in his hotel suite in Seattle, as the vital and voluble maestro greets you with a bear hug and a flood of apologies for his English, it's clear that Rostropovich isn't ready to become an old man. He bustles about the room preparing tea for his interviewer and translator Elena Dubinets, who's there to interpret those floods of Russian whenever Rostropovich's English fails him.

It's clear he is a man of strong passions, musical and otherwise. Rostropovich chuckles about the check for $40 he received from the Reader's Digest for the "Best Reply to a Question," after that publication asked him: "Is it true you married your wife (Bolshoi Opera diva Galina Vishnevskaya) four days after meeting her? And what do you think now?"

Rostropovich's reply: "I think I wasted three days."

Next to Galina, with whom he has concertized as a pianist for the past 35 years, the great cellist says "three composers were closest to my heart: Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Britten. Now only I am still alive among all the Prokofiev dedicatees."

Shostakovich, with whom he studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory, advised Rostropovich to give up the cello and concentrate on composing. The latter produced two concertos, a number of songs and chamber works including string quartets.
 
"I looked at my work," Rostropovich reflects, "and it sounded very close to Shostakovich, only not so genius. I am really a performer, not a composer."

Britten, whom Rostropovich adored, used to accompany him on the piano with playing so magical that the cellist, overcome, would be unable to play his own first notes: "I told Ben, 'Could you please make the opening of the Arpeggione Sonata not quite so beautiful?' "

As a sort of musical ambassador, Rostropovich served as a musical liaison between Britten and Shostakovich, each of whom admired the other greatly.

"Now, I'm the most happy man in the world," says the genial maestro, sipping tea and munching on the industrial-strength nondairy dark chocolate bars he travels with during Lent.

"When the Soviet government threw me out, I thought about suicide. But so many governments came forward to offer me citizenships — Germany, France, U.S.A., Great Britain. I would not accept another passport, but Prince Rainier of Monaco offered me one that says 'nationality unspecified.'

"Gorbachev offered me a new Russian passport. But I don't want to return to Russia to live, because I am doing so much here in the West. Galina and I have a foundation in Washington, D.C., to help sick children. We help vaccinate them against hepatitis and other diseases — more than a million children. I have so many friends, including two presidents, who have helped this foundation. I have contact with great orchestras, and every four years I have my big international competition in Paris, to help young artists. (The eighth Rostropovich International Cello Competition is coming up in August 2005.)

"Because of my tragedy in having to leave Russia, God gave me a second life after the first 47 years. It has been a fantastic life."

She's back

Violist Helen Callus, who left the University of Washington faculty for the University of California at Santa Barbara this year, is back in the Northwest this week for two concerts with the Northwest Sinfonietta, Christophe Chagnard conducting (8 tonight in Town Hall at Eighth and Seneca; if you miss that one, it's repeated at 8 p.m. tomorrow in Tacoma's Rialto Theatre; call 253-284-9400 for tickets).

Callus, who is playing Hindemith's "Der Schwanendreher" in these concerts, says her move to Santa Barbara was "absolutely the best choice I could have made. I learned so much here in Seattle, but at UCSB, the time commitment is about half as great, which means I can concentrate on more performances, writing articles, recordings. And on recruiting top students."

A new recording is coming out soon on the ASV label with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, featuring Callus in works of Walton, Arthur Benjamin and York Bowen (all British composers of the same era). Callus also is the president-elect of the American Viola Society, where she has "big plans for when I step up." The ocean is three minutes from her door in Santa Barbara; the university chancellor came to her first recital. Things are looking up.

"I appreciate Seattle so much," Callus says, "and I hope my husband (violist Michael Lieberman, who also is a Northwest Sinfonietta member) and I will be back here regularly to perform. But I can make a bigger impact this way, and I'm very happy about that."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com

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