Word: slava
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...debating point, and perhaps unresolvable. Admiringly, Conductor Seiji Ozawa says that "Slava I doesn't interpret, he feels. His music is really his character. He is conducting his life." His 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...
With my whole soul I said, 'Now I will not be silent.' " He addressed his letter to four Soviet papers, all of which refused to publish it. But he gave copies to Western newsmen. Referring to the officials who pass upon art in the Soviet Union, Slava asked: "Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word? . . . Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he In knows, what he has personally thought about, experienced, and not merely...
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...
...worst moments came in the late summer of 1973. Galina and Slava sailed down the Volga to give concerts and recitals in small riverside towns?the only places left to them. But in city after city, they found that the engagements had been canceled or that the posters announced the music without naming them as performers. In despair, Slava wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev: "Please, I have already given up concerts abroad. I only conduct in my own country. Please help me. If this situation is not changed, I will have to give up music in my country...