Mourning of Rostropovich watched over by Bach Printer Friendly
Top News U.S. concerned at Sri Lanka abuses, halts some aid India beat Bangladesh in first one-dayer Govt to sell Maruti stake for 23.68 bln rupees Pakistan forces poised to defeat rebels - Musharraf New questions raised in Canada over Air India bomb By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW (Reuters) - In death as in life, Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich was steeped in music when his coffin was placed in the Moscow Conservatory on Saturday. Rostropovich, who came to symbolise the fight for artistic freedom under Soviet rule, died on Friday aged 80. Thousands of people including many of Russia's most prominent cultural and public figures, paid their respects in the Conservatory's Great Hall under portraits of Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach and other composers. President Vladimir Putin, who had awarded Rostropovich Russia's highest order last month, laid red roses on his coffin. A recording of Rostropovich's cello music echoed through the hall. An orchestra also played Rachmaninov's First Symphony in the cellist's honour. Russian news agencies quoted organisers as saying more than 5,000 people had attended the conservatory by 1400 GMT, two hours before the end of the mourning ceremony. His wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, wearing dark glasses and holding a handkerchief to her mouth, sat near the coffin which was placed on a bed of roses by the orchestra pit. "He was a great musician, the greatest," Vladimir Mikhailov, 80, said. "When I first heard him play, it brought tears to my eyes, but it also warmed my heart." Georgy, a 19-year-old cellist at the conservatory, said: "He was the last genius of his generation. I never heard him play live but I often listen to his recordings and he is like a mentor for me." Putin, who last month feted the maestro at an 80th birthday celebration in the Kremlin, called Rostropovich irreplaceable. "Spiritually generous, never indifferent, determined, fiery. So he will remain in our memories," he said in a telegram to Rostropovich's family released by the Kremlin. The cellist's death was announced four days after that of former President Boris Yeltsin, whom Rostropovich joined on the barricades to resist a coup by Soviet hardliners in 1991. LONG ILLNESS Russian news agencies quoted a source close to the musician as saying Rostropovich had died in a Moscow hospital after a long illness. A funeral service will take place in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral on Sunday and he will be buried in Moscow's Novodevichye cemetery, where Yeltsin was laid to rest on Wednesday with full state honours. Rostropovich was one of Russia's best-loved cultural figures and considered among the world's greatest cellists. He also earned a reputation internationally as a champion of civil rights during Soviet rule. While he was out of the country in 1978, the Kremlin stripped him of his citizenship for what state newspapers labelled "unpatriotic activity". He spoke up in defence of dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov when they came under attack from the Soviet authorities. The Kremlin restored his citizenship in 1990 in the new spirit of openness under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Within days of the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989, Rostropovich took his cello to Berlin to play at an impromptu concert by the remains of the wall. "It was a call of the heart," he said later.
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Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, performing at the White House on September 17, 1978.
Azerbaijan-born cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich (nicknamed ''Slava'', Russian for glory) has passed yesterday at age 80, after having been admitted to a Moscow hospital in February this year, allegedly for intestinal cancer. The exact cause of death however has not been released. His coffin has been put in the Moscow Conservatory today, and many prominent and thousands of other Russians came to salute him. The cello player only died four days after his friend Boris Yeltsin.

Rostropovich was not only considered to be one of the best cellists in the world, but he also was a symbol of the resistance to the Soviet regime. In 1970, he provided shelter to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose writings alerted the world to the Gulag system of forced labour camps in the Soviet Union. Because of his support for dissidents, Rostropovich fell in disgrace and lost his citizenship in 1978. He was restored during the perestroika reforms.

Rostropovich conducted the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1994. In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered him the First Degree in the Order of Service to the Fatherland for his "outstanding contribution to the development of world music and many years of creative activity."

President Putin, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, French PM Dominique de Villepin and others have already expressed their regrets about the loss of Rostropovich. De Villepin brought to memory Rostropovich's performance at the Berlin Wall during it's fall, an image globally broadcasted which earned him international fame.