RE: Rostropovich, The Great Artist Has Died.

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All Forums >> [Casual Banter] >> Off the Grid >> RE: Rostropovich, The Great Artist Has Died.

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RE: Rostropovich, The Great Artist Has Died. - 4/28/2007 12:33:23 PM

ultraplay

Posts: 18
Joined: 4/28/2007
Status: offline

Goodbye Slava

Whilst I generally bat with the side that tries to point out that the"Emperor has no clothes" Slava was the exception.
I am not a musician but got to know him quite well through my fairly unglamorous job.He really was an enormous human being-the same job gave me a pretty good yardstick of politicians businessmen and other riff raff to judge him by.
To deal with the creativity thing -he was instrumental in the works of Britten and Shostakovitch;a lot of what they wrote would have been stillborn without him.Shostakovitch might well have disappeared to the Gulag without him ;he looked completely gentle and unremarkable-just a chubby myopic musician-but this guy had a lot of courage.
I was working with him when the army/KGB tried to depose Gorbachev.Slava went straight to the airport flew to Moscow and got into the building where the opposition was holed up.He spent three days there with an AK47 waiting for the Russian Special Forces to break into the place.I asked him if he knew how to use a Kalashnikov-he said it was probably similar to a cello.
He lived under and opposed Stalin and Kruschev and played a big and unappreciated part in the way Russia has made some tiny progress towards democracy and freedom
He was an enormous worker for charity and leaves a large foundation supplying hospitals for the poor in South America
In his early seventies he could still work all night rehearsing music that younger cellists would dismiss as unplayable
Creativity is hard to measure but I had the good fortune to see him play many times-he was also a great and nuturing conductor.Genius is overused but I think maybe he was one
One of the most endearing things about him was his treatment of "little" people-security guards,waitresses and so on-anybody who ever saw him greet a waitress he had met before with his inimitable"Aaaaaar My Dear" followed usually by the Russian triple kiss could see a real human being
He leaves a huge hole-now Im off to get drunk blind shitfaced drunk;Slava would have approved of that as well

(in reply to seeksfemslave)