Cellists: Midsummer Marathon

He came on the stage of London’s Royal Festival Hall like a subway commuter at rush hour. Briskly threading his way through the orchestra, he plopped down on his chair, tossed a quick glance at the conductor and began to play—so abruptly that he took the audience by surprise. Head bobbing, lips pursed in concentration, he embraced his cello bear-hug fashion and sawed away with the workaday look of a man slicing bread.

But what came out was a freshet of lush sound that exploited the limits of the instrument’s capabilities. At 38, Mstislav Rostropovich is ranked by many critics as the foremost heir to the mantle of Pablo Casals, now 88. More impetuous than the visionary Casals, Rostropovich’s attack is charged with a propulsive urgency, his singing tone more darkly burnished.

From Memory. Though a silent, pale, frail-looking man, Rostropovich is the iron man of the concert circuit. Periodically, like a compulsive mountain climber, he seems compelled to tackle great chunks of the cello repertory simply because it is there. In eleven concerts in Moscow last winter, he accomplished the unparalleled feat of playing 41 different works, virtually the entire repertory for cello and orchestra, all from memory.

Last week’s performance in London was the finale of a one-man festival of nine concerts, in which he performed 31 works in 35 days. Marveled one critic: “The experience becomes almost frightening in its intensity. It is as though he is so full of music that he cannot resist pouring out more and more.”

Highlight of the concert was Benjamin Britten’s entrancing Symphony for Cello and Orchestra. The work is one of three that Britten has composed for the cellist since they became fast friends five years ago. At concert’s end, the audience was ecstatic. And so was Rostropovich, alternately applauding the audience, Conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, the London Symphony and Britten, who was sitting in a box with Leonard Bernstein. At the insistence of the audience, Britten left his box to conduct an encore.

Line of Teachers. An indefatigable crusader for the enrichment of the scant cello repertory, Rostropovich has induced several other composers to create for the cello. Prokofiev and Shostakovich both wrote works for him. Born in Baku, Russia, Rostropovich was virtually weaned on cello music; his grandfather and father, who studied under Casals, were noted teachers of the instrument. When the family moved to Moscow, Rostropovich joined his father’s class at the Children’s Music School, began teaching on his own at 15. At 19 he was appointed soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic, played in a trio with the famed Russian virtuosos, Pianist Emil Gilels and Violinist Leonid Kogan.

Rostropovich is also an accomplished pianist; between his heavy schedule of appearances this summer, he accompanied his wife, Bolshoi Opera Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, at several recitals throughout England. Leaving London last week, Rostropovich explained that he was off for a month-long holiday in Armenia with his wife and Britten. “It’s my first vacation in ten years,” he said. Even an iron man is entitled to that.