Introduction

                              "Oh, light memory! You illuminate
                              the times passed and deeds forgotten
                              Oh, memory, let me go inside your repositories!"
                              [Torkwatto Tassou]
                              ("The Freed Jerusalem")

  Oh, your majesty reader, this is neither memories in a traditional sense of
word, nor recollections used by memory's band of selfish author. But this is
also not a "montage of epoch views" as genre being defined for famous books
of Vikkentij Veresaev - "Pushkin in life" and "Gogol in life" by their coeval
publishers. Although you will find in this book both elements of the first
and the latter.

  There is a [poly]-stylistic of genres being laid before you , some literary
hybrid, issued from boiling magma of our hero and his contemporaries lives,
from the character [origin] of musical epoch itself and it various
reflections, from the boom of times, composing the very historic "symphony"
that made [forced]  Russia to be on the crest of social and spiritual
dramas of  mankind in the 20th century. By the lot Russian musician
Mstislav Rostropovich was turned out to be in the center of these dramas.
He had become one of the most noticeable characters of the clear drama
serial that was the subject of constant world attention due to modern fairy
information resources and video culture.

  We must felicitate each other dear reader. We became live witnesses of
historic retargeting and redistribution of central roles
being played in the whole history process. And this redistribution was made
in favor of our sweet MUSIC. In due course Vasilij Vasilievitch Rozanov,
thinking and making his verdict about Russian literature and criticism of
19th century had resumed: "The writer became the central person in our
society and history which thoughts are listened by all". These central
persons, these owners of thoughts[thinks] in Russian society in previous
age composing the known historic chain were according to Rozanov's thought:
Pushkin, Goncharov, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Dostoevsky, The Count Lev Tolstoj…
And of course Gogol, whose mystery partly associated with "his craziness
[madness]" (by Rozanov), was "in absolutely unbearable things he had spoken
out".

  In Russia today and in all civil world of 20th century, MUSIC AND ITS
PRIESTS begin to influence the society more than artistic word and masters
of it. With powerful evolution of visual arts, radio, sound recording in
20th century usurping "the visual power" and esthetic attention by all
aspects of movies, TV and video culture, just the musicians become the
central persons of public attention, carriers of some all-comprehended
cosmic sound imagery, with the universal emotionally seething language that
stay beyond nationalities and therefore is common to everybody. At the end
of our century TV screen made their art of a public event. And more over
the event which, being duplicated many times on TV sets in different sides
of the world, is turned into a majestic show, however with all our modern
history. According to cute remark of Russian newspaper "Komersant Daily",
this turn of our cultural and social history into the grand show due to TV
sets has "the same scale and tension as to Wagner's or Verdi's
operas" [gains "near-Wagnerian or near-Verdian operas' scale and tension"].

  Oh, here is the vast field for discussions on theme "what, to which and why
concedes". Especially, if you remember such all-over-the-world musical TV
shows as for example, setting opera "Aida" on the Arena di Verona open
theater stage, or famous concerto by three great tenors - Luciano Pavarotti,
Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo, or say the unique duet by Montserrat
Caballe and Freddie Mercury during the Closure of Olympics in Barselona, or
finally, the historic concerto on the Red Square in Moscow by Mstislav
Rostropovich…

  We won't make comments here to the traditions of rock-musicians' grandiose
stadium sets, show business empire, gained [up to] 95 percents
of modern musical and particularly TV market [s]. Although the grandiosity
and so-and-so transcontinental scope of modern rock-scenic life, undoubtedly
influences the life forms and perceptions of classical music. But just the
priests and knights of latter, not the [legislators of] show business men,
makes the skeleton of spirituality and culture that is agonizing in
non-spiritual mankind's space. They, THE HIGH MUSIC PRIESTS, to see into
details and following the Vasily Rozanov's formulae, are becoming "the central
figures in our society and history, to which thoughts everybody listen". And
not only because now, the society prefers to see and listen rather than to
read.

Why else?

Let's try to construct some legendary figures' line of the 20th century. Well,
say like this: Sergei Rakhmaninov, Vladimir Gorovitz, Jakow Heifitz, Kurt
Abendroth, Maria Callas, David Oistrakh, Herbert von Karoyan, Swiatoslav
Rikhter, Evgeny Mravinsky, Luciano Pavarotti, Jegudi Menukhin, Mstislav
Rostropovich…

Musicians, that are potentates of mind. Performers, that are colossuses. Big
musical personalities and universals, which had generously presented their
talents (and doing that right now) to society and creativity.

...

Chapter IV

A knight from other times

                              All geniality contains epoch…
                              And in this sense the artist is as big as the
                              composer.

                              Alexander Serov

  Having achieved in 1960 the age of Christ, he was awarded the rank of
professor of Moscow conservatoire.  And he had become honorable member of
Royal Academy of Music in London next year. In a year after he "provoked" the
only one performance of great Shostakovich  as a conductor in Nizhny
Novgorod, coupling it with his own conductor's debut… Sensation run after
"violent" Mstislav, searching him already all round the world for there was
no other performer of classic music that like famous soviet cello artist had
made up to two hundred concertos a year!

Absolute memory and unquenchable composer's gene seething in him and ever led
him into the vanguard of music literature birth, led him forward by gigantic
steps. Rostropovich was not to say worth - "an ever-avid dog" in this
sphere. As it was known, joyful collaborators hoaxed Brockgauss with the same
characteristic. They even inserted in famous vocabulary strange collocation -
"forgetful dog", that was the favorite Brockgauss'es self curse, when in the
mid of work he used to spank himself on forehead and exclaimed, "Oh, I'm a
forgetful dog!". Everybody knew how unlimited Brockgauss'es memory was.

Even Dmitri Shostakovich dedicated his First Concerto for Cello to
Rostropovich being inspired by his memory and creative eagerness. Composer
created it in summer 1959 living on "datcha" in Komarovo near Leningrad, and
on the 2nd of August he handed notes to Rostropovich. According to legend,
Slava worked over the grandiose score (29 minutes ring) only for four days: 9
hours a day during first two days and 7 hours a day next two days. And on the
6th of August he played to Shostakovich his concerto by heart three times.
The blitz-marathon to the musical future! And the future were uprising 60th,
that were fully coincided with the creative fate of  Dmitri Shostakovich.

All premieres of First Concerto for Cello and Orchestra by Dmitri
Shostakovich were a great success. Evgenij Mravinskij was the conductor on
the 4th of October 1959 in Leningrad. Alexander Gauk conducted it the same
year on 9th of October in Moscow. Mstislav Rostropovich's unwearying bow
carried on new powerful music of Shostakovich all over the world later on:
Eugene Armandi, Igor Markevitch, Kirill Kondrashin conducted it.

It is interesting that, in the year of 90th Anniversary of Shostakovich's
birth, Rostropovich opened the A.D.Sakharov's IV International Festival
"Russian Art and Peace" in Nizhny Novgorod by playing the same First Concerto
for Cello, the most dramatic and deep composition of Shostakovich. He played
it with orchestra of Nizhny Novgorod's philharmonic under the conduct of
Israel Goosman, his old friend and associate for foundation of the very first
festivals of modern music in the Soviet Union on the Volga River town. This
concerto had resounded on the 18th of October 1996 in the Kremlin Concert
Hall ["up to tie"] filled up by citizens of Nizhnij Novgorod as wrote local
press.

But nevertheless the author of concerto, Dmitri Dmitrievitch Shostakovich,
in the only one "kapellmeister's experiment" conducted just the First
Concerto for Cello accompanied by "potential" conductor and burning soloist
Rostropovich in the same legendary ancient Russian town on the Volga, only
34 years earlier - on the 12th of November 1962.

In some old fairy tale, may be in Jurij Olesha's "Three fat men", somebody
exclaimed: "Memorize this day! Memorize this hour!"

Memorize it!

Just from these cello concertos of Shostakovich the impetuous movement [of
Rostropovich] to the conductor's line had begun. Working with the Second
Concerto for Cello of Shostakovich (dedicated also to Rostropovich), the
cellist exclaimed: "I always envy to conductors! I always dreamed about cello
with hundred chords. But the talent of Shostakovich overcomes imperfections
of instrument. Having play this music I feel myself for the first time at the
musical level of conductor."

By the by, the conductor's origin was laid undoubtedly in the nature of
Rostropovich's attitude to his instrument, to professional technique of
playing on cello, which Mstislav had described once by himself in the
following way: "The wave of bow corresponds to conductor's gesture in some
way. Left hand of cellist is the vocal chord of a singer, the right one is
singer's breath. Before the move of bow, I inhale air, the first move goes at
the expiration. I don't play only the phrase: I sing and conduct it."

And we, his conservatoire's contemporaries and passionate audience of his
historic concertos of the 60th years, had seen and sharply reacted to that
courageous at the times, free and expansive plastics and mimics of performer,
feeling by our own emotional experience all smiting measure of it. And we
didn't surprise to the productive force with which Slava Rostropovich
"infected" almost all prominent composers by his inimitable manner of
deriving sounds, his love to music and his choice - cello. It was impossible
not to be delighted by this daring play of music performer-innovator, that
was creating in front of our eyes the reform in cello skills of the 20th
century. First it was in contact with Prokofiev, then with Shostakovich.
Soon later it was with Britten. Gradually this "chain reaction" comprised the
vast ring of modern composers, having become the legend in life of our hero.

When I came up to Slava with the modest aim to make my first interview as a
journalist (it was autumn, 1963), he began to tell me with uncommon
enthusiasm about this "magic chain" of mutual influence between composers,
the binding link of which had become HIS CELLO.

...