Mstislav Rostropovich †
Mstislav Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, where the house is now a Rostropovich museum. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he joined Shostakovich's composition class - they were to remain life-long friends. Rostropovich was one of the few Russians brave enough to support Prokofiev and Shostakovich when their works were banned as "formalist" by the increasingly restrictive Soviet regime. Rostropovich married the Bolshoi opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya whom he met in Prague and they had two daughters.
In 1970 Rostropovich was condemned by the Russian authorities for sheltering the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and writing a public letter supporting him. His work as a commissioner has hugely enlarged the cello repertory with works from Lutoslawski, Messiaen, Prokofiev, Britten, James Macmillan, David Matthews and many others. His musical heroes have been Britten, Shostakovich and Prokofiev all of whom wrote works for him and became close friends. Since 1974 Rostropovich had become one of the leading conductors in the West. He was Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington and was a regular guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphany Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. His late recordings for Sony Classical include Schnittke´s Cello Concerto no. 2 and In Memoriam, and "Return to Russia", a unique audio and video documentation of Rostropovich´s tour of Russia in 1990 with the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, his first visit there since his exile Other composers who have written for Rostropovich include Bernstein, Messiaen, Lutoslawski, Dutilleux, Ginastera and Benjamin Britten.
Mstislav Rostropovich died in spring 2007.