His Human Touch

LONDON--It is Mstislav Rostropovich’s birthday, but he’s doling out as many kisses as he’s receiving.

For two weeks, the Russian cellist, conductor and pianist has been celebrating his 75th (actual date: March 27) with a residency at the London Symphony Orchestra, conducting half a dozen programs devoted to his “good friends” Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.

In his last outing in the fortnight, he is joined in a Britten program at the Barbican Centre by another close friend, 27-year-old Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov. The audience is already cheering when the maestro grazes Vengerov’s cheeks at the end of the concert, but it explodes when he smacks Vengerov squarely on the lips.

This is not surprising behavior from the lovable man everyone calls “Slava” (a short version of his first name translating as “Glory”). Through his relationships with the world’s most prominent musicians and composers, Rostropovich has helped inspire a significant portion of 20th century music: Nearly 200 works have been written for him either as soloist or conductor (Prokofiev, Britten and Shostakovich were among his benefactors). He has received more than 40 honorary degrees, some 130 awards, and the abundant affection and respect of peers and public alike. And he has long been an outspoken voice for human freedom. He risked his own well-being to defend his friends against the former Soviet regime. When the Berlin Wall fell, he famously jetted there the next day to serenade the celebrants, tears streaming down his cheeks. In 1991, he joined Boris Yeltsin inside the Russian parliament building as a show of solidarity.

But on this important birthday, the man being celebrated has chosen to use his talent for human connections to pay tribute to his colleagues, past, present and future. The audience loves Vengerov, but perhaps no one claps more avidly than Rostropovich.

“Britten’s old friend Rostropovich belies his age to soar again,” London’s Sunday Observer said in a review of the concert. The Evening Standard called him a “birthday boy of scintillating panache.” And the Guardian reported that “with typical generosity, he diverted the focus from himself.”

The day after the Britten concert, Rostropovich joins the London Symphony Orchestra at Air Studios, a dramatic recording space in a converted church in northwest London. They’re rehearsing Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, which they will perform at Lincoln Center later this month, part of a birthday tour of the United States that includes appearances in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Toledo, Atlanta, Chicago, Costa Mesa and Santa Barbara.

This is an orchestra he knows and loves (he says every single member is a friend), first performing with it in 1961 and earning honorary membership 14 years ago. Half-perched on a leather-topped stool with the tailored shirt of his gray suit purposefully untucked, the barrel-chested, gray-haired Rostropovich conducts with athletic vigor, taking breaks only to give notes to the players. He cracks a joke, sings a few bars, pounds out the rhythm with powerful hands.

After the rehearsal, Rostropovich has agreed to spend an hour being interviewed with an interpreter at his side--a security blanket he often uses despite living mostly in the West since the 1970s. The Soviet Union, which honored him in 1951 with its top award, the Stalin Prize, later punished him for supporting such musicians as Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and for sheltering the dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Forced into the welcoming arms of the West in 1974, Rostropovich and his wife--soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, whom he has accompanied on piano throughout the world--and two daughters were soon stripped of their citizenship. In 1977, he landed a job as conductor of the National Symphony in Washington, a post he held for 17 years.

But he has ended rehearsal early, and the translator isn’t due for another hour, so he decides to brave it alone. He breezes into the Green Room at the former church, plunks down a bag of unopened birthday presents and a briefcase stuffed with scores, and rushes up to greet his interviewer with a trio of kisses (left, right, left). He sips English tea milkless, in observance of Orthodox Lent. But he isn’t waiting until Easter for his chocolate. He breaks open the foil on a bar of French noir with gusto and devours the whole thing in minutes--save the pieces he has insisted on sharing.

“I’m tired,” begins the famously tireless Rostropovich, who has slept only two hours, returning after last night’s post-concert party to an apartment in the midst of renovations and to a pile of letters and faxes. He goes on to show no signs of tiredness.

He doesn’t really need an interpreter. Apart from the sometimes garbled pronunciation and dropped notes of his English, the melody is clear and eloquent. “Difficult because most difficult symphony Shostakovich,” he says, referring to the rehearsal, his voice blurred with chocolate. “Long time no play.”

Today, he is certain, Shostakovich was sitting on his shoulder in the studio, coaching him on the nuances and mechanics of the score. “I’m so proud,” he says, “because I make concert with my three kings--Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. Not only three geniuses, but I was very close to them humanly. I tell you honestly: I don’t worry if I died. Because I’m sure my friends wait me there.” He points a long index finger skyward.

He’s sure they all made it to heaven?

“Oh, yes. I’m sure,” he says, and laughs conspiratorially. “About me maybe I more doubt!”

He seems to have a particularly soft spot in his heart for Shostakovich, a man some scholars have accused of making too many concessions to the regime.

“I know how much he suffer,” Rostropovich says, “but I think if for example Shostakovich not so much suffer, he composed such music or not? That’s the important question. Because you know for example in the United States, maybe many many talented people, but have so easy life. The music nice, beautiful but music not with tra-ge-dy--you know?”

In Southern California, Rostropovich will perform with the Pacific Symphony as part of its “Dvorak in America” festival. “His best symphony is ‘New World’ Symphony,” Rostropovich says. “Was very different, because he composed in the United States. That’s why so emotional--because he missed his country. For composer that’s very very important. He must suffer.”

Rostropovich says that the memory of Shostakovich’s pain can still bring him to tears. “Something different for me when I play Beethoven,” he says. “I don’t know him personally, so I don’t know how he suffer, how he express. For Shostakovich, most definitely I know how his face when he is sad.”

Although Rostropovich says that remembering that face is a useful tool for interpreting the music, he quickly points out that a cellist or a conductor is not required to suffer in the same way. “Performer like a priest in the church,” he says. “Priest no tell his words. He just transfer words from God to the people. Of course, he uses some words for explaining. But he not composer. He only guide for transfer idea from God to the people. We transfer idea from the composer.”

He says there are two kinds of performers: technical showoffs and those who submit themselves to the complex emotions of the creator.

“If I play Dvorak concerto, I feel I am Dvorak,” he says. “I feel that I suffer--or I have hope. Because music have emotion always. Great performer give this emotion--not only technique. And this transfer to the public.”

But that role as a transmitter of emotions is different for him as a cellist and as a conductor. “Cellist I have my finger,” he explains, raising up his hands and playing a phantom phrase. “My nerves touch string, and all that I would like, all I feel coming direct to me from to my instrument. Conductor, I have no contact with instrument; between instrument and myself another human being. I must explain to him in some miracle way that’s very mysterious how I like him to perform this phrase, or the emotion. For conductor very important, have such telepathy contact, human to human. Because if he trust me, if he love me, he understand my message. That’s why in rehearsal I never make for musicians some doubt. I only tell him, ‘Bravo, but maybe you make this note just a little shorter.’ I know if I make not very tactful rehearsal comments, in concert make for me very bad.”

And where did he learn that little bit of psychology?

“I am 75 years old, my love,” he says with a sly smile. “And second, I am not completely idiot.”

Rostropovich has long been considered a technical and emotional master of his instrument, a cellist who always played by heart, often wearing an expression--eyes closed, head tilted up and to the side, mouth bent into a Charlie Brown smile--that looks something like the definition of bliss.

London Symphony co-principal cellist Moray Welsh studied with Rostropovich in Moscow in 1969 and in the residency program notes he wrote, “I was fascinated by his astounding mastery of the cello. [He] always possessed a unique sound, instantly recognizable.”

As a conductor, he is sometimes criticized for keeping his nose in the score, his “wild” style being hard for musicians to follow. But Welsh told the BBC that while it can be hard to follow him note for note, his energy and the heartfelt drama he brings to the podium are unparalleled in creating the right atmosphere for a piece of music.

There have been “several propositions” for music directorships, but at this stage of his life, Rostropovich doesn’t want the administrative responsibilities that accompany the job. He’s still on the whirlwind schedule he has always maintained. He hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years, and his wife is on record saying he should slow down. But he says his next vacation will be that great vacation in the sky.

“Normally I live on airplane,” he says, adding that he is working on consolidating his archives, which are divided among his homes in London, Paris, Moscow, Geneva, Lausanne and New York state.

He says sheepishly that three Russian museums are being constructed in his honor. “I not accept this if it was just to me--but it’s to my father and me,” he says. Leopold Rostropovich was a cellist and professor in whose cello case he slept as a baby. “I very happy about that. Because if I died--” he says, correcting himself “--of course I die! After that, make museum. But not now.”

He is scheduled to premiere a Krzysztof Penderecki concerto in 2003, but he won’t commit to any new works after that.

“I tell you in 2003 how I feel,” he says. “Maybe I tired for new music. Maybe I would like for new generation of cellist found for [new] generation composer. I conduct approximately 80 premieres, and as cellist I play 120. I think that good example for young people.”

He will be both conducting and performing in the U.S., but he is definitely spending more time on the podium these days. “I see how I perform, but for example I already not perform symphony concerto Shostakovich,” he says, “because 75 years you have not so fresh muscles.

“And I see one videotape when I perform symphony concerto of Shostakovich. I amazed. I very good!” He laughs. “I don’t like make comparison with myself, and I maybe now not so brilliant. But some repertoire I better than before, not have so much physical but emotional.”

Suddenly the door to the Green Room opens and in pops the floppy-haired head of yet another one of Rostropovich’s good friends, Boston Symphony music director Seiji Ozawa, who has come to whisk the cellist off to Buckingham Palace, where they are rehearsing for a private concert arranged by Prince Charles.

“Hello!” Ozawa shouts, and they embrace.

“For me is greatest conductor in the world,” Rostropovich says, patting Ozawa’s shoulder, shifting the spotlight.

“This is big brother,” Ozawa counters, kneeling by Rostropovich’s chair. “Music and life. Music I learn so much, so many years.”

Then he looks up and asks: “How many years?”

They try to decide whether they met in 1964 or ’65. This month, Rostropovich will go to Boston to play for Ozawa’s 29th and final season as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and he will also join Ozawa for a post-season goodbye event at Tanglewood in July.

“I finish, I finish,” Ozawa says, pouting intentionally, shaking his head.

“You never finish!” Rostropovich exclaims. “You start!”

The translator, who has shown up a few minutes earlier and is sitting politely, unused, breaks the mood by whipping out her camera and asking in Russian if she can take a photo of the pals. Rostropovich throws an arm around Ozawa, lets his head drop onto his shoulder. Click.

Then he kisses Ozawa on the top of his head.

Two days later, it’s March 27, the birthday itself, and the London Symphony is throwing Rostropovich a party, a gala with some of the world’s most distinguished musicians: Ozawa, Vengerov, Penderecki, pianists Martha Argerich and Evgeny Kissin, conductors Colin Davis and Zubin Mehta, violist Yuri Bashmet and violinist Gidon Kremer.

“I think I’m his adopted grandson,” Vengerov says by telephone from his hotel room in London, the morning before the gala. “I love him. There is a great chemistry between us on stage; he’s one of the few conductors that really brings this spark to the music. He has such an incredibly expressive face. I wish you could see it while he’s conducting, not just from behind. His face is really music--you can see behind the face the greatest expression, the story, you can see everything. When I was playing the other night, it was actually the first time when I was also thinking what I have never thought before: ‘How many times do I have to play with him?’ It made me very sad while I was playing.”

At the gala, Rostropovich sits in the audience in a tux with wife Vishnevskaya and lets his friends play for him. At the end, he walks on stage, extinguishes the candle on a cello-shaped birthday cake, blows kisses to the cheering audience. He smiles devilishly while raising an imaginary glass to his lips, then walks off, to a roar of laughter and applause.

Backstage, as the performers crowd around, there are more hugs and kisses.

“Ah!” he exclaims. “What you make for me, my friends! What you make for me!”

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Mstislav Rostropovich, “Dvorak in America,” Pacific Symphony, Wednesday, 8 p.m., Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $21-$75. (714) 755-5799. Also Thursday, 8 p.m., Arlington Theatre, 1317 State St., Santa Barbara. $25-$75. (805) 963-4408.

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Kristin Hohenadel is a freelance writer living in Paris.