Word: solzhenitsyns
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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...
...Unlike Solzhenitsyn, Slava and his family were not expelled from the Soviet Union. They are still on the Kremlin's leash; they are required to renew their passports once a year at a Soviet embassy. But as far as most Russians are concerned, the two are nobodies. Galina's name is nowhere to be found in the Bolshoi Opera's special 200th anniversary commemorative book. Slava's entry in the latest edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia runs a meager twelve lines. The Soviet press continues to ignore his work abroad, in fear, says Slava, that other musicians might...
...Galina sang Tosca last week at Covent Garden. Friends report that her life with Slava is often tempestuous, partly because his career is rising and hers is fading; after all, Rostropovich was largely responsible for destroying her position at the Bolshoi. While Galina supported her husband's defense of Solzhenitsyn, she feels that Slava's friends sometimes take advantage of him. "He is a man who must be handled with love, yes, but also with brain," she says emphatically. "In music his intuition is never false, but in human relationships he is very often mistaken because he wants to love...
...lowly alike are brought to life with a few deft words: de Gaulle, Nehru, Ben-Gurion, Willa Cather ("Aunt Willa...a rock of strength and sweetness"), Bela Bartok ("a composer to bear comparison with the giants of the past"), the family's Italian cook, a hotel porter in Leipzig, Solzhenitsyn, Glenn Gould ("that most exotic of my colleagues") and Jacob Epstein ("like his sculptures, he seemed as if God had formed him with a few grand strokes, not attending much to detail...