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The Rostropoviches Go Home
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# : |
19174 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
1,516 Words |
| Author
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Samuel Lipman
Samuel Lipman is publisher of the New Criterion and author of
the book of essays Arguing for Music/Arguing for Culture. |
From the standpoint of the outside world, the most interesting event last year in Soviet classical music wasn't the premiere of a new composition, or the debut of a new performer; it was the return home of cellist-conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, in February. They spent just one week in Moscow and Leningrad, and this year American television viewers were able to witness something of this extraordinary event for themselves, in the PBS television program Soldiers of Music.
Not only was the documentary a superior offering in a medium all too given to presenting trivialities and gratuitous violence, but here was a program about great art and great issues, including the future of what was till recently a world superpower. To understand what makes the Rostropoviches' return so significant, we must understand their place in Soviet music, and the place of music in Soviet life as a whole.
The Rostropoviches are two of the most important performing musicians to have come to maturity in the Soviet Union after World War II. As a cellist Rostropovich has long ranked among the most renowned players of the instrument in this century: Pablo Casals, Emanuel Feuermann, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Vishnevskaya was the premier Russian soprano of her era, giving heartrending performances not only in the national operatic treasures of Tchaikovsky, but also in the works of such non-Russians as Beethoven, Verdi, and Puccini. Both Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya were close friends and associates of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and England's Benjamin Britten; and in the years just after the war, Rostropovich also collaborated closely with Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.
Civil Courage
Like other great Soviet performers, at home the Rostropoviches were the favored creatures of both the government and the public; abroad, each of their tours in the West was a triumphal progress by what appeared to many to be Soviet royalty. But what distinguished the Rostropoviches was not simply their musical accomplishments, great as these were. As a couple and as individuals, they had defended Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest, and definitely one of the bravest, writers Russia has produced. By inviting Solzhenitsyn to live with them at the time of his public persecution by the Soviet security apparatus, the Rostropoviches demonstrated what must be called civil courage: the willingness to take personal risks in the performance of public acts of conscience. Because they harbored Solzhenitsyn, and because they
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