Word: instrumentality
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Rostropovich went by the nickname "Slava," meaning glory - or, in the translation preferred by the American composer Leonard Bernstein, "possessed by the gods." I knew Slava through my father, Lynn Harrell, who belongs to a generation of cellists that inherited an instrument Rostropovich had changed forever. My memory of our meetings is of Slava's effusive affection: from bear hugs to damp kisses on both cheeks. Everyone he met - hotel workers, the Emperor of Japan, even the Pope - left with wet cheeks. Both with and without his instrument, it seemed, it was his goal to touch as many people...
...cello, best known for a series of unaccompanied suites by Bach, is the orchestra's most solitary instrument. It is also one of the most intimate, a result of its proximity in range and expression to the human voice, and also the posture of its player, which is one of embrace. In Rostropovich's hands, this potent mixture of the familiar and the solitary turned the cello into an instrument of dissent, embodying the lone, heroic voice in its 20th century struggle against oppression...
Particularly in the cello concertos of Dmitri Shostakovich and Witold Lutoslawski, written for Rostropovich, he set his instrument in conflict with the orchestra, a doomed but determined voice in a struggle against the collective. But no matter how isolated he seemed on stage, Rostropovich was not without an ensemble; his allegiance was with the audience, which responded instinctively in support. "I give people music and beauty," he once said. "In exchange they give me love and recognition...
Thoughts of belonging and legacy were prevalent among the 24 cello soloists, 98 cello students and countless music lovers gathered in Kronberg. Every cellist knows deep down that no matter how alive their instrument seems in their hands, it will return at their passing to its dormant state: a wooden box with four strings. Most agreed that Rostropovich's greatest legacy was his ability to cajole and inspire the major composers of the century to write for the cello. In total, there are said to be 132 compositions that owe their existence to his enthusiastic suggestion, a figure evident...
...soloist poured forth on the stage, and it was as if Slava were there once more because every cheek in the house was wet, and at this moment, a moment he would have loved, it was enough to know that in his playing, and forever in his instrument, there was so much music and beauty...