Word: russian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tuned up and ready to blow, the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington waited on the stage of the austere concert hall at the John F. Kennedy Center. A cheerful cherub of a man walked swiftly to the podium and smiled at the audience. His face was a pale Russian winter's landscape, his blue eyes shone mischievously. He turned toward his colleagues and, with a sturdy slash of his baton, launched into a high-speed, raucous overture that seemed to roil the Potomac. It was strictly show-biz razzmatazz, a pastiche stitched together by Leonard Bernstein from his 1976 musical...
What was a nice, "serious" musician doing in a piece like this? It was an all-Bernstein program, and the composer had dedicated the overture to Rostropovich by way of acknowledging his arrival in Washington. The music was called Slava!, which is not only the Russian word for glory but Rostropovich's nickname, and it was a good way for the conductor to show Washington that he is as gifted with jazz as he is with Tchaikovsky. Rostropovich caught the spirit easily, bending his body into the music, shafting his cues with a vigorous baton, sculpting the shapes of sound...
Like Casals, Slava is an unabashed romantic. Cradling his Strad between his legs?or, more precisely, embracing it?he seems to pour his Russian soul into every phrase, bowing long, singing lines with a subtle eloquence and a purity of tone. His technique is flawless. Modern composers lay finger-mangling minefields in the thickets of their pieces, but Rostropovich negotiates them with cheerful ease. "I don't even know why my hands do certain things sometimes," he says. "They just grab for the notes." His dynamic range, from the greatest fortissimo down the line to a pianissimo that comes...
...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 ago, he gave a radically nontraditional performance of that proud Viennese national resource, Die Fledermaus. It was almost predictable that a Russian might fail to exploit the sassy, lighthearted flavor of the classic, and sure enough, Rostropovich's overloaded Bat crashlanded into a nest of snapping critics, who almost declared war on the Soviet Union. Wrote the International Herald Tribune's David Stevens in one of the more merciful reviews: "A Slavic...
...English remains a performance as well. Once, Slava bounced into the Russian Tea Room, Manhattan's best-known musicians' hangout and, spotting an old friend across the crowded room, released a full-voiced salutation consisting of several raunchy eleven, twelve-and 13-letter cuss words. The room grew silent. The borscht turned pale. "See!" crowed Slava cheerily. "I learn your language...