RIP Mstislav Rostropovich

The great Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich died today at 80. I hope to write up a little about his work as I know it (he was a close friend and champion of Shostakovich, so I got to know some of his discography that way) when I have a chance. For now here's an anecdote that springs to mind, related by Shostakovich's friend Isaak Glikman in Story of a Friendship as he describes the composer's first heart attack in Leningrad in May 1966:

I stood on the pavement, numb with shock, with no one to say a word to. ... But suddenly there appeared at the hotel none other than Mstislav Rostropovich, clad in a summer shirt and filthy as a chimney-sweep. He had heard by telephone what had occurred, and had that instant set off from Moscow. Finding no taxis at the airport, he had flagged down a passing motorcyclist, jumped on the pillion and got himself to the Yevropeyskaya Hotel enveloped in a cloud of dust. Such was the impulsiveness and the resourcefulness of the famous cellist in his young days.

Of the few times I heard him in concert: He was performing as a cellist with the Pittsburgh Symphony in February 2003 on the weekend of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and he opened his Sunday afternoon concert by performing the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in their memory -- a moving tribute, and a clear sign of how Rostropovich believed music speaks directly to our shared humanity.