We belatedly offer here our memory of late cellist, conductor, anti-Soviet dissident and Citizen of the World Mstislav Rostropovich, who passed away in April.
Rostropovich was, of course, one of the protean figures of the arts in the 20th century. He was a prodigious talent, with Pablo Casals one of the figures who defined his instrument in his generation, but also a conductor of unique passion, charisma and artistry. No one was ever bored at a concert or recital by Rostropovich.
Rostropovich embodied the experience of the troubled Russian people. A student of the great Russian musicians of the 20th century, Prokofiev and Shostakovitch, he was at all times thoroughly Russian in his musicianship. At the same time, like any great artist he broke through the boundaries of the provincial. He was not just Russian; he was eminently, earnestly and universally human.
In high school, SWNID was crazy for classical music. For several years, we took advantage of the appealingly cheap student tickets to subscription concerts of the Indianapolis Symphony, from the age of fifteen attending nearly all such concerts by ourselves to savor the wondrous sounds of that mid-major orchestra playing the great art music of the European tradition.
One year in that period, the ISO announced a special concert in addition to its subscription series. Rostropovich was recently exiled from his native Russia, where like other public figures he had estranged himself from the Soviet Communists by using his fame to denounce the regime's abuses of human rights. And so the ISO had contracted with him to conduct a special concert, for one night only.
We don't remember the date, and we barely remember the program. Two pieces by Tchaikovsky were programmed, one a relatively obscure tone poem and the other one of the lesser-performed symphonies--we don't remember whether it was the first or the third. Clowes Hall, Butler University's superb facility where the ISO performed in those days, was packed.
Rostropovich transformed the evening by his tremendous talent, but more by his dedication to the music. The ISO was a good orchestra with many outstanding players, but certainly in the second tier of the country's full-time symphonies. These pieces were fine pieces, but hardly the masterpieces that anchor the typical orchestral program. But Rostropovich extracted from the players and the scores something extraordinary. The music was by turns luminous, warm, agitated, mournful, and hopeful. The players found in the relatively unfamiliar passages the soul of the Russian spirit, embedded by the great Russian composer and extracted by the conductor connected to the composer through just a couple of musical generations.
What we in the audience heard confirmed what we dared not believe: that even in the darkness of the Soviet repression of millions of people, the human spirit could find a voice.
In those days, we didn't think that the Communist bloc could ever be opened. It was a given that the planet was divided into the Capitalist and Communist spheres, each held in check by the specter of mutually assured thermonuclear destruction. The best one could hope was that the Commies didn't take more countries and that a few lucky dissidents like Rostropovich could get a bittersweet reprieve as they defected or were exiled.
But the music that night said something different. It said that within the heart of the human being--the creature whom Christians regard as endued with God's image--there remains a capacity to rise above the most terrible of circumstances--circumstances created, ironically enough, by other bearers of the divine image.
The audience applauded longer and louder than we had heard before or have heard since. We applauded not just the music but the indomitable spirit of the man who had led it and the nation of people whom he represented--very different from the regime that he had fled. Rostropovich returned to the stage about a dozen times, each time insisting that the orchestra rise to receive the ovation, and the orchestra refusing until Rostropovich began physically to lift players from their seats (nearly breaking the principal violist's instrument as Rostropovich grabbed for him first).
Yes, we applauded the greatest evening of music most of us had ever heard. But more than that, we applauded the soul of Rostropovich, the real masterpiece on display that evening.
Without knowing it, we were applauding the One who made the very Russian, very human soul of Rostropovich.
No comments:
Post a Comment