Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INTERVIEW!!!
CONVERSATION WITH
MSTISLAV
ROSTROPOVICH
by Tim Janof
Both on the cello and on the conductor's rostrum, Rostropovich is considered one of the leading
interpreters of the music of Shostakovich (with whom he studied composition), Britten, and
Prokofiev.
Mstislav Rostropovich is one of the world's most outspoken defenders of human and artistic
freedoms. In 1974, after a period of four years during which the writer Solzhenitsyn resided in their
home, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya left the Soviet Union at their own request. Since then he has
devoted much time and has given numerous performances to support humanitarian efforts around
the world. In 1990, after an absence of 16 years, he made a triumphant return to the Soviet Union
with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, giving concerts in Washington and
Leningrad to enormous acclaim. During the coup of August 1991 the strength of his attachment to
his native Russia compelled him to fly, without a visa, to Moscow, to spend those momentous days
in the Russian Parliament building and on the streets, where he was hailed as a national hero.
Mstislav Rostropovich holds over 40 honorary degrees and over 30 different nations have bestowed
more than 130 major awards and decorations upon him. These include the German Order of Merit,
the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Lenin Prize, the Annual Award of the
League of Human Rights, the Preamium Imperiale from the Japan Arts Association and the
Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
***************************
TJ: When you burst onto the music scene, people were struck by your white hot performances.
Your sound was strong and your vibrato was wide, which was a striking contrast to your
predecessors. Where did your unique concept of sound come from?
MR: Let me give you a little background first. My family lived in two-room apartment in Baku
until I was seven years old. My mother was a pianist and my father was a cellist who had worked
with Casals. There is a picture of me sleeping inside my father's cello case when I was four months
old.
My first instrument was the piano, which was my first love. To this day, when I am learning a new
cello work, I always start at the piano instead of the cello. One of my father's favorite games was to
have me play a melody on the piano starting on a key that he chose at random. I became so
proficient at this that at four or five years old he had me do it for friends. My parents never thought
that I might have a special talent for the cello.
After my family moved to Moscow, my father played in orchestras that performed in small towns,
such as Zaporozh'e. He did this to make some extra money in the summer months. I remember
going with my godmother to open air concerts of my father's when I was seven or eight years old.
I'd cry when I listened to Tchaikovsky or some other sentimental music, and my godmother would
give me a piece of chocolate to soothe me. I soon learned the trick to getting chocolate.
It was around this time that my father said he wanted to teach me how to play the cello. I told him
that I didn't want to be a cellist because I wanted to become a conductor instead. He replied, "First
you must try the cello. If you are successful with the cello, you can do what you want after that."
My mind, even at that age, was geared towards Romantic symphonic music, not cello music. My
interest has always been in the large scale repertoire and that's the sound I've always had in my
head, not the cello sound. My "big sound" concept on the cello therefore came from my desire for a
more orchestral scale projection. I don't hear a cello sound when I play, I hear an orchestra. I never
tried to copy another cellist's sound.
My concept of sound also comes from my experience of playing works with many composers,
including Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten, Penderecki, and Lutoslawski, to name a few. I also
studied orchestration for three years with Shostakovich and I wrote two piano concerti. I am
therefore very sensitive to the different orchestrations and timbres of different composers and I
learned to vary my sound depending on whose music I was playing. I don't think of myself as
Given your phenomenal technique, you must have practiced endlessly when you were young.
I generally practiced at most two hours per day. My record was over a four day period after
Shostakovich gave me the score to his first cello concerto. I knew that he was working on it, but I
first learned that he had completed it from the local newspaper. I remember wondering anxiously if
I would get to see it, since at the time I had no idea if I would be the one to give its premiere. I
rushed over immediately when he called and he said that if I liked it he would dedicate it to me. I
was in heaven! I went straight home and practiced ten hours that day, ten hours the next day, eight
hours the day after that, and then six hours on the fourth day. I only practiced that hard because I
was so excited about the piece, and that was the most I practiced in all of my 79 years. I played it
for Shostakovich from memory after the fourth day, which was one of the proudest moments in my
life.
I was very lucky because I didn't need to practice when I was young. While some performers had to
practice every day in order to stay in top form, I didn't. It was as if my fingers had a memory of
their own. They never forgot what they were supposed to do.
If you weren't a big practicer then what was that story about you hanging food from the ceiling
as you practiced.
That was when I lived in Orenburg, which is in the Urals. I was thirteen years old when my father
passed away. He had been the cello professor at the local music academy and I was the best cellist
in town after he died, so I was asked to take his place. My family needed the money, so I dropped
out of school in eighth grade and took the job. In order to earn some additional cash, I also played
some pieces at the local theater as part of an operatic production and I made kerosene lamps to sell
at the market. Basically, I was so busy that I didn't have time to practice more than an hour or two
per day.
My godmother often baked large flatbread for me, which I tied to a ceiling lamp such that it hung
near my head as I practiced. The hard part was catching it so that I could take a bite. The bottom
line is that I was so busy that I didn't have time to eat, so I ate while I squeezed in some precious
practice time.
What are your priorities when you perform? Are you thinking about the music, the composer, the
audience?
I never choose because they are all important, but I do care very deeply about doing justice to the
composer. I've had many composers play parts for me on a piano. Sometimes they play very badly,
but I see what they feel in their face. I try to re-create their feelings in my performances.
What were Shostakovich and Prokofiev like as people?
Shostakovich was very shy and sensitive and he had a rich inner life that he kept to himself. He
avoided confrontation and would fib to spare somebody's feelings. I remember him going up to
somebody after a concert and praising their performance and predicting a great future career even
though the performance was actually pretty bad. He generally kept his true thoughts and feelings to
himself, though he did tend to open up a bit at parties.
Prokofiev, on the other hand, didn't seem to have an unexpressed thought. If he didn't like
something, he never considered another person's feelings before he shared his opinion. As an
example, Prokofiev once asked Shostakovich why he used so much tremolo in his Fifth Symphony,
telling him that it sounded like Aida, which I gather was a bad thing. He could be quite acidic.
Their composition process was also very different. While Prokofiev did a lot of his composing at
the piano, Shostakovich worked out a lot of ideas in his head. I do have in my collection small
pieces of paper on which Prokofiev would jot down ideas during massage sessions, so he did do
some work away from the piano, but Shostakovich's process was much more internal. I took many
walks with Shostakovich during which he would suddenly raise his head and become very quiet,
which I understood to mean that he was composing.