All Work and All Play : Rest? Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich Doesn’t Know the Meaning of the Word; Just Look at His Calendar for the Next 3 Years

If Mstislav Rostropovich has always been seen as larger than life, the same can be said about his calendar.

The celebrated cellist, who for three decades has shown he can also conduct, will soon step down from the helm of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. Retiring from a post he’s held for 17 years would presumably allow him breathing room after a lifetime of concerts and recordings. That’s if he wanted breathing space.

Apparently he does not.

“June 16 and 17 are my last two days with the orchestra. But not in life, I hope,” Rostropovich said from his office at the Kennedy Center. He performs a recital tonight at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. “Every day until my 70th birthday--on March 27, 1997--is booked. For three years, every day, 9 to 4, 9 to 5, 9 to 6.”

That doesn’t include nights, of course.

At Cerritos, he has scheduled an imposing program: Richard Strauss’ Sonata for Cello and Piano, Opus 6; Bach’s Suite for Unaccompanied Cello in C Minor; Debussy’s First Sonata for Cello and Piano, and the West Coast premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s Epilogue from “Peer Gynt,” for cello, electronic tape and piano. Lambert Orkis will serve as pianist.

Looking ahead, his three-year-at-a-glance calendar reveals six operas, three of which are new: In May, he leads “Lygeia,” based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe, by U.S. composer Augusta Read Thomas, at the International Festival of Evian in France (he’s festival president); in December, “Lolita,” by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin with the Stockholm Opera, and next year, “Gesualdo” by Schnittke with the Vienna State Opera.

He’ll also conduct Musorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” in Moscow, Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” in St. Petersburg and Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” in Vienna.

“That is only six operas, but (there are) also seven compositions for cello premiere,” he said, reeling off a list that included a concerto for flute, oboe, cello and piano by the late Olivier Messiaen. “And in between, I play normally. I will not stop my normal (performing) activities.”

An innocent request for background materials on Rostropovich elicited a 17-page fax, all single-spaced: 11 pages dedicated to his discography (more than 100 recordings), three to premieres (well more than 100), and three to awards, doctorates and honorary citizenships.

As a prerequisite to granting an interview, Rostropovich declined to address questions about politics, preferring instead to discuss music.

But one thinks of Bach and religion, Beethoven and the French Revolution. Can artistic expression ever be completely divorced from social, religious or political concerns?

“I don’t know all that in general, but I know about my life, and for me that is impossible,” he admitted. “I ask now that we not discuss politics only because so many people comment about that. Let me say only that I’m still very optimistic about my country, very optimistic.”

He was anything but optimistic 20 years ago, when Rostropovich--born in Baku, an Azerbaijani city on the Caspian Sea--departed the former Soviet Union after sheltering dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn and writing an open letter to Leonid Brezhnev protesting Soviet restrictions on cultural freedom. Concerts, recording projects and tours for both Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, had been canceled; they became “non-persons.” Though granted exit visas, they were eventually stripped of their citizenship.

In 1989, Rostropovich performed at the Berlin Wall two days after its destruction. In 1990, the Soviet Legislature restored his citizenship and all medals and honorary titles. His July, 1991, concert in Prague fulfilled a 1968 promise to play when the last Soviet soldier left Czechoslovakia. The next month, without a visa and at great personal danger, he flew to Moscow to stand beside Boris N. Yeltsin following the coup that deposed Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

In September, 1993, before a Red Square crowd of 100,000--far larger than any that gathered during the concurrent political crisis in which Yeltsin, who attended the concert, disbanded Parliament--Rostropovich led the National Symphony in works by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. (When cannons exploded in the “1812 Overture,” several people reportedly shouted, “A coup!”) Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the dissident’s 20-year-old son, was piano soloist for the two-week tour, but did not play on the brief Red Square program.

As important to Rostropovich, in any case, as his political activities vis a vis his homeland, are his efforts on behalf of the Vishnevskaya Rostropovich Foundation. Named for his wife, the foundation created, and funds, the Moscow-based Children’s Healthcare Network to modernize two hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“I would like that your grandchildren have healthy grandchildren,” he said. “Each third child born in Moscow has some genetic damage. Each third child!

“That’s 70 years of the Communist regime, a disastrous situation for ecology. Not only Chernobyl--there are so many catastrophes, and many more powerful. In 1957, there was an atomic explosion 20 times more powerful than Chernobyl, exactly in the center of Russia.”

Extra-musical issues having been dispatched, Rostropovich (“Slava” to even the most casual acquaintances) seemed thrilled to focus instead on his recital, and especially on Schnittke, who in recent years has taken a firm place in the Russian pantheon of composers. “Epilogue” is a special arrangement for the cellist of a ballet originally scored for orchestra; though a single movement, it runs more than half an hour, and Rostropovich likened it to a cello concerto.

He obviously feels Schnittke’s acclaim is deserved.

“After my friends--the composers that enriched my life, Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten--died, I had not found a musical figure who continues for me my contact (with) composers,” he reflected. “In comes Schnittke in my life, so now I make performances, several world premieres, of his compositions.”

Rostropovich also talked about Bach’s six suites for cello alone, a pinnacle of the cello repertory.

“All my life I work on these suites,” he said. “Two years ago, but not yet on the market, I finished my first recording of all the suites in audio and video, a monumental work in my life. Five weeks, each day and each night, I make this work.

“Bach is so great that in one’s life you come back many times. This time, I again revised my opinions. I have become more intelligent where Bach is concerned, and some things change in interpretation. This time, too, I study the manuscript more precisely, more carefully. Even now I change my bowings.”

* Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich will play works by Richard Strauss, Bach, Debussy and Alfred Schnittke tonight at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. Curtain time is 8 p.m. Tickets, $35-$45. Phone (310) 916-8500.

* Times Link: 808-8463

To hear an excerpt of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich performing a Brahms’ sonata, call TimesLink and press *5570