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His recording of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 is essential listening to understand the energy, passion, and contribution to music of this great composer, as well as being an excellent introduction to Rostropovich’s unstoppable technical skill, artistry, and ability to communicate the intent of a composer.

Rostropovich and Shostakovich (the two guys in the center with glasses) listening to a playback during a recording session for the Cello Concerto, November 1959

Years later, when at the helm of the National Symphony Orchestra as conductor, he recorded Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. The piece’s final movement is taken at a controversially slow tempo; the clashes of brass and percussion seem to hover forever over a field of stubborn, persistent string phrases, highlighting perfectly the ambiguities and majesty that characterize much of Shostakovich’s music.

I had the fortune of seeing Rostropovich conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the War Requiem a few years ago. The piece, commissioned for the dedication of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962, is a dense, knotty, and passionate anti-war work by Benjamin Britten that intermingles sung texts by fallen World War I soldiers with a Latin requiem for the dead.
At the end of this moving piece, Maestro Rostropovich, after being brought back to the stage numerous times, held the printed score by his friend and mentor over his head for a few minutes amidst thunderous applause, bowed slightly, and finally left the stage.

For Rostropovich, the music reigned supreme.

Rostropovich had often said he was a “footsoldier in the service of music.”
Bravo, Slava… march on.

Learn more

• Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation - their mission is to improve the health care of children in the Russian Federation and other Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union
• Shostakovich, Man of Many Variations