Word: rostropovich
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...Rostropovich has a distinctly colloquial talent for giving instructions to the orchestra. For a crisp pizzicato, he says: "I want hear champagne corks popping." For a soft passage: "Before the sound is coming, smell some bee-oo-tee-fool flowers." For a lyrical passage: "You don't say 'I LOFF YOU!' You whisper [cuddling an imaginary violin] 'I LOFF YOU.' " For a subito forte (to play suddenly loud): "Imagine you with your girl friend. Suddenly your wife come into room. That is subito forte...
Despite such engaging ways, many musicians and critics complain that Rostropovich takes too many liberties with his music, both at the cello and on the podium. Cellist Starker, whose style is considerably cooler and more disciplined than Slava's, deplores -"the personal approach that disregards the composer and stresses the feelings of the individual." It is not that Rostropovich insists upon sending his disregards to the composer; he simply hears phrases, colors and rhythms that nobody else hears. The result is that when he conducts, his soloist's gift for subtlety sometimes deserts him. In Vienna two years...
...performances of the Schubert Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano and the Schumann Cello Concerto are typical. The phrasing and pastels of dynamics in the Schubert expose a bold lyricism that would have astonished?but probably pleased?the composer. As for the Schumann, Leonard Bernstein, who recorded the piece with Rostropovich, confesses that he would just as soon not do it again in quite the same fashion. "Slava takes enormous freedoms," says Bernstein. "He does things that one would think would simply destroy the form of the piece. But he makes it work because of the tremendous conviction and love that...
They were difficult years. Each foreign plaudit that fell upon Solzhenitsyn was followed by a turn of the Kremlin's screw at the dacha. As Rostropovich tells it, "Official people said I must kick him out. My wife and I did not find that reasonable. We explained our point of view?that each human being has a right to make of his life what he wants." In October 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize. When the Soviet press increased its abuse of the author, Rostropovich became enraged and decided to write a letter of protest. Says he: "This was greatest...
Solzhenitsyn was eventually exiled. Rostropovich and his wife were punished in other ways. Recalls Slava: "I said to Galina, 'After this you will have many difficulties. If you want, we can have an official divorce.' She said, 'No, absolutely not.' " Without explanation, Galina was given only infrequent assignments at the Bolshoi; when she did appear, her name was left off the printed program. Similarly, when her recordings were played on the radio, her name was omitted from the announcer's list. Says she: "I would listen to myself being obliterated." Slava adds: "It was like a slow-motion plan against...