Rostropovich

[mahler10th]

I have just finished watching BBC TV documentary on Slav Rostropovich.  I am almost in tears.  I had no idea...
What an incredible person.  What wonder.  This is the man whom, Seiji Ozawa tells us, on hearing his sumo wrestler friend (!) lost his daughter, got a plane from Europe to Tokyo, then got a taxi from the airport to the sumos house which took a further one and a half hours, sat there outside the house and played Bachs 'Sarabande', then got the same waiting taxi back to the airport and flew back to Europe!  He also went over to his beloved Russia during the troubles of 1990, from where he had been banished 16 years previously, and sat with a his exhausted bodygaurd, holding the sleeping bodyguards rifle...
Some amazing recordings of his tutorials in moscow can be heard, and some stories about his antics there.  Above all, his cello playing...nothing I can say, one only has to listen to it.  His deep and personal friendships with Shosty, Proky and Britten are also revealed.  I have come way from that documentary with a real sense of someone who really was bigger than life...someone who shed tears with the voice of his Cello, as in the Albert Hall, 1968, playing Dvoraks Cello Concerto (Svetlanov conducting) to an audience livid with all things Russian because they were invading Dvoraks home, Czechoslovakia...oh I want that recording!
What an amazing Cellist, teacher and humanitarian.  I hope like he hoped, he is indeed 'up there' having fun with Britten and admonishing the generation of the Classics for not urging Mozart to write a Cello Concerto.
Sheer brilliance.

[Mirror Image]

I agree with everything you said, John. Rostropovich was a world-class virtuoso and was loved by many. His musicianship was a force to be reckoned with.

While he was obviously one of the best, if not the best, cellist of his generation, his conducting seems to be underrated. I think his Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphony recordings have a very special insight into both composers, with whom he was friends with of course. He also turned in a good, all-around Tchaikovsky cycle on EMI.

[Herman]

This is the man whom, Seiji Ozawa tells us, on hearing his sumo wrestler friend (!) lost his daughter, got a plane from Europe to Tokyo, then got a taxi from the airport to the sumos house which took a further one and a half hours, sat there outside the house and played Bachs 'Sarabande', then got the same waiting taxi back to the airport and flew back to Europe!  He also went over to his beloved Russia during the troubles of 1990, from where he had been banished 16 years previously, and sat with a his exhausted bodygaurd, holding the sleeping bodyguards rifle...

That's a lot of CO2

[Opus106]

That's a lot of CO2

...at STP or thereabouts.