The magnificent beauty of music!

UNESCO Courier, July-August, 1997 by Isabelle Leymarie

* Are your exuberance, your enthusiasm and your generosity innate or have you developed them over the years?

Mstislav Rostropovich: Innate. I was born happy!

* How did your love for the cello originate?

M. R.: Little by little. At the age of four I began to learn to play the piano, then three years later my father said to me: "You are going to play the cello." My father was a cellist himself so he probably wanted me to perpetuate the tradition. He realized that I was very gifted musically. I was already composing at the age of four.

* Do you still compose?

M. R.: No.

* Is it difficult to play both the cello and the piano?

M. R.: I don't play the piano any more. My wife won't let me.

* Why?

M. R.: I accompanied her on the piano for thirty-five years. When she stopped singing, other famous singers asked me to accompany them. But my wife put her foot down. "You're already lucky that I allow you to conduct orchestras!"

* Russian women are very forceful!

M. R.: Oh yes, very powerful. Very powerful. [Salvador] Dali's wife Gala, a Russian, had a very forceful character - just like my wife in fact. They were friends and got along very well. I remember one day my Galina said to Gala: "That blessed moustache of your husband's! Why don't you cut it off while he's asleep?" Gala replied: "Because he'd drop dead when he woke up and saw it gone!"

* Do you enjoy conducting an orchestra as much as playing?

M. R.: Yes, the happiness and joy are just as intense. Perhaps even more extraordinary because the music I conduct is better than what I play myself.

* And yet you do not have the same physical, sensual contact with an instrument.

M. R.: That's true, but when I conduct symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler or Shostakovich, I'm in heaven.

* Do an ear for music and musical tastes become more refined over the years?

M. R.: Yes. Musical tastes develop, but gradually and imperceptibly. I recently heard a recording of the Dvorak concerto that I made as a young man. Today I don't like it.

* How do you approach a new musical work?

M. R.: First of all by reading through the score without an instrument. I hear all the music in my head, the phrasing, the nuances, all the details. Of course, when I pick up my cello, changes may occur, but I always have a clear idea in my head of what I'm going to do.

* Improvisation has practically disappeared from the classical repertory. Do you miss creating your own music?

M. R.: Don't forget that interpretation to some extent involves improvisation.

* And yet when Chopin or Liszt sat down at the piano they created impromptu music at the drop of a hat.

M. R.: But they were composers of genius! In their day there were also pianists who were incapable of improvising even on two notes. I regard my interpretation of a work as a kind of improvisation. It's as though I myself were composing it. I put myself in the composer's place.

* So we're talking about a re-creation.

M. R.: Exactly.

* What qualities are needed to play well?

M. R.: First of all a tremendous love of music. This is the only thing that can overcome the pre-concert emotional stress, the nerves, the stage fright. If you don't love music, you feel naked on the stage and just want to run away.

* Despite your love of music, have you ever suffered from stage fright?

M. R.: Yes, at a recital given by my wife in New York. I sat down at the piano without having been able to practise beforehand. I was terribly uncomfortable. Sitting there at the keyboard I thought: "There are lots of critics out there in the audience, waiting to pounce like a pack of wolves. They'd just love to chew me up and spit me out." I made mistakes right from the start and played the first two love songs terribly badly. Then I thought: "What the heck! I've already made some terrible mistakes, they can tear me to pieces if they want to, so now I might as well play for my own pleasure." Then I started to play really well.

* In any case, you don't make music for the critics, many of whom aren't musicians anyway! You play for the love of it, because it responds to an inner need.

M. R.: That was the problem; I had been distracted. If you think of something else instead of concentrating fully on the music, you won't play well. That's what I was driving at. I forgot the pleasure I should have been feeling while I was playing and my performance was affected. I can only play well if I am totally possessed by my love of the music.

* At the concert yesterday evening, when you were playing Brahms's Quartet for Piano and Strings opus 25 with Isaac Stern, Eugene Istomin and Yuri Bashmet, I was struck by your concentration. White your partners often exchanged glances or signalled discreetly to each other, you were completely absorbed by your cello and your score, although you heard everything.

M. R.: Yes, my ears were particularly sharp yesterday.

* I felt that you were putting all your soul into the beauty of the sound and that your relationship with your instrument was one of love.

M. R.: Ah! Love, love, tra la la la! (Rostropovich starts singing).