Meeting the Maestro

My Brief Encounter With Rostropovich

While I realize many tributes have been published since the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich died last month, I wanted to give a short personal account of an encounter with him.

I met Mstislav Rostropovich, called Slava by all who knew him, in March 2003 in New York, when I was 13. I had attended one of his last concerts that he gave as a cellist, where he played an all-Shostakovich program with other, younger Russian all-stars: Yuri Bashmet, Maxim Vengerov and Yefim Bronfman. The significance of an all-Shostakovich program was greater for Rostropovich than for any other musician of the past few decades, because some of the most important pieces created by the Russian composer were written for the cellist.

After the sold-out concert in Avery Fischer Hall, I wondered if it was somehow possible to meet Rostropovich, one of my music heroes. I made my way to a medium-sized room with a growing number of people in it and positioned myself by a closed door. Within a few minutes, the room was packed with about 200 people, mostly Russian, waiting to see the great man. There were two doors from which Rostropovich could come out, so I had a 50 percent chance of being in front of the right one.

As great luck would have it, within a few minutes, there he was, beaming and entering with immense energy. I can't explain why, but he greeted me and proceeded to talk with me for about 20 minutes. When I told him how incredible it was seeing him perform the Eighth String Quartet, he described what it was like playing Dmitri Shostakovich (and with Shostakovich himself), how he always felt the composer's weight on him. The composition was very emotional for Rostropovich, since Shostakovich had wanted it to be played at his own funeral. Rostropovich was very open in talking about all aspects of his playing Shostakovich; when our conversation ended, he had tears in his eyes. What most struck me about this encounter was not only that one of the very greatest musicians in the world, at age 76, wanted to greet strangers, but also that he spent so much time, struggling through broken English, explaining deeply personal matters to a young cello student.

As a musician, Rostropovich's brilliance provided inspiration that led to some of the now standard pieces in the repertory; but he also stretched the expectation of the instrument itself and what a cellist is capable of doing. His playing was always marked by one of the most recognizable sounds of any string player: His sound is silky and enveloping, his vibrato ranges from searing to relaxed, with every nuance in between, and his bow work is impeccable. As my cello teacher, who is third cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, recently told me, when Rostropovich was “on,” he was the greatest string soloist the Boston Symphony ever worked with in my teacher's 25-plus years with the orchestra. His sound soared above the orchestra like no one else's, as he made each piece his own.

Rostropovich was a heroic figure for millions of people because of his famous defense of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, his life in exile and his brave work for human rights. He received more than 30 honorary degrees from institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Oxford. One can go on and on about Rostropovich's human and musical accomplishments, his charisma, his courage.

But as a student of cello and one who has had many musical ideas shaped by Rostropovich, I will always cherish the meeting with the cellist. I will remember him as a human being of the highest musicianship and generosity.

Daniel Lelchuk

The writer, a senior at Hanover High School, is a cellist in the Boston Youth Symphony and the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic Orchestra.

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