Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, died Friday. He was 80 ...

MOSCOW – Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, died Friday.

Mstislav Rostropovich was many things: a commanding conductor, a political dissident, a public figure in the world of classical music. But before all that, he played the cello. One year after his ...

Mstislav Rostropovich's influence and importance as a cellist was almost beyond description. He changed the canon of standard cello literature; the ovations he elicited around the world often ...

“It’s not that he always stood up for freedom,” said my friend Alex, also a musician, of Mstislav Rostropovich. “It was that he was a great cellist who communicated well.” In a sense, with each attack ...

MUSIC, under totalitarianism, was one of the great escapes. The most vicious secret policeman could not wholly curb the human spirit once it moved into the world of sounds. “Slava” Rostropovich (the ...

This is kind of an experimental show. Bach wrote six beautiful suites for solo cello, and I want to showcase two of them through interpretations by eight different cellists. The cello is probably the ...

from Bach and Vivaldi to Shostakovich, Britten, Bernstein, Messiaen and Dutilleux. He has recorded virtually every major cello concerto, joined in chamber recordings from Rameau to Schubert to ...

Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who courageously fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, has died.

MOSCOW — Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who courageously fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, ...

Mstislav Rostropovich, a cellist and conductor who was renowned not only as one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century, but also as an outspoken champion of artistic freedom in Russia ...

Mstislav Rostropovich, a cellist and conductor who was renowned, not only as one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century, but also as an outspoken champion of artistic freedom in Russia ...