Rostropovich, the greatest cellist of the 20th century passes

I awoke yesterday morning to the radio and was stunned to hear of the death of Mtislav Rostropovich, who for me was unquestionably the greatest cellist to play in the past century. His death was not an unexpected one, as he was 80 years old, but the sense of loss is still palpable. I feel as if I lost a close friend.

I first heard Rostropovich live in concert when I was 8 years old. He travelled to perform at the Wharton Center in East Lansing, Michigan. My parents could only afford the cheapest tickets, and so we sat literally in the last row of the upper balcony. My Dad brought a pair of binoculars so that we could actually see what he was doing. I had been playing the cello for only a year at the time, but I still remember vividly watching him perform the "Dance of the Elves" by Popper as an encore. We were so far away from him, his bow was already a third of the way to the tip when the sound would reach my seat! Soon after, I discovered his recording of the Dvorak Concerto and Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. This recording, made in 1969, was and is my single favorite recording of anything. There is a moment right at the end of the 3rd movement of the Dvorak written shortly after Dvorak's sister had died which features a wistful, almost nostalgic sense of peace and pain. The cello climbs up through 3 phrases to a high B trill. Right after this moment, Rostropovich creates the most incredible sense of loss between the high B and the following note, an A, that I have ever heard or imagined. It is quite simply the most incredible moment of all Western music, recorded or live, that I have ever experienced, and there are no other cellists who even come close to the understanding of the universe of emotion in that simple whole step shift.

My contact with Rostropovich continued to be abstract until I attended the Tanglewood Music Center in 1998. That summer, at the very end, Rostropovich gave a masterclass. I was selected along with two other cellists to play for him. For my repertoire, I chose to perform the first movement of Prokofiev's Symphonie Concertante, a piece written for Rostropovich. In the class, I was very surprised to see that Rostropovich was a very short man. On stage, he looks to be at least 6 feet tall because of the tremendous energy and intensity with which he performs. I had worked on the Prokofiev with two different teachers, Anthony Elliott at Aspen the previous summer, and Norman Fischer at Rice University, where I had just completed a Bachelor's in Music, and so had studied the markings in the score quite diligently, choosing to change some of the bowings in the effort to get better projection. The first thing Rostropovich said was that I needed to play the bowings in the score, that splitting them was like bad breathing in singing. Fortunately, I had learned the piece with the original bowings, and was able to immediately play with them.

Some people think Rostropovich's sound is due to his possession of the most incredible Stradivarius cello, the "Duport" Strad, but he handily disproved this theory in the masterclass. Shortly after starting, Rostropovich walked on stage, grabbed my cello and began to play the Prokofiev, talking the whole time about what he was looking for in bowing. Standing a few feet away from him, I was amazed to hear the Rostropovich sound coming out of my cello! I most decidedly do not possess a Strad or anything near to one, having had the opportunity to play on a Strad for a month while studying at Juilliard.

After instructing me on how to bow the piece, Rostropovich sat down at the piano and began to play - from memory - the orchestral reduction of the Symphonie Concertante to accompany my attempt to absorb his suggestions. After my half hour session was over with him, he grabbed me in a big bear hug and gave me a scruffy kiss on the neck, as was his custom, posed for a photograph and then signed my copy of the Prokofiev score. Unfortunately, the photograph did not turn out, but the score is one of my most treasured possessions.

It was the pinnacle of my life as a student. After 13 years of having my life as a musician and as a human affected by this man, I finally was able to play for him and it was much more than I had hoped for.

I only wish that I could have had the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time to perhaps have studied with him more extensively