Russian ’Cellist Has Precious Instrument

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29245, 1 July 1960, Page 13

Russian ’Cellist Has Precious Instrument

A precious 'cello, fashioned 200 years ago in Italy by the famed instrument-maker, Lorenzo Storioni, of Cremona, will be heard in Christchurch this week when Mstislav Rostropovich plays. z A noted Russian 'cellist, Rostropovich arrived with his piano accompanist, Alexander Dedyukhin, in Christchurch yesterday to fulfil his first engagement in a concert tour of New Zealand and Australia. )

Through an interpreter from the Ministry of Culture, who is travelling with him, the 33-year-old master of the 'cello, who has been acclaimed as the best performer' since Casals was at the peak of his career, said that he was born into a musical family. His father was also a 'cellist, and his mother was a pianist. He married Galina Vishnevskaia, well known in Russia as a star soprano of the Bolshoi theatre. Beginning his serious musical education when he was -eight, Mr Rostropovich gave his first concert at 14. Since then his concert

tours have taken him all Over the world—through Europe, Britain, America, and the Far East. He had talked of the 'cellist’s art with Casals on several occasions, he said, and had appeared at th? Casals festival in Mexico. “1 like all good music and have no special favourites,” Mr Rostropovich said of nis repertoire, but one work which he treasured was a composition specially written for him by his friend, the noted composer, Serge Prokovieff, a year before he died, in 1953. Friend of Prokovieff Like his friend Prokovieff, who had a teste for gay clothing, he too liked to collect colourful shirts which he had a habit of buying in the different countries he visited, Rostropovich said. Yesterday he wore an unusual Shirt he bought in America. It was made of bright yellow linen, piped round the collar and front opening with narrow, black and white braid.

He hud been touring in countless countries with Mr Dedyukhin since 1949, and it had always been “a dream” that they would be asked to come to New Zealand, Mr Rostropovich said through his translator. Asked why, he said he had heard New Zealand spoken of as a particularly interesting country. When he is not travelling and preparing for concerts, he teaches music at the Moscow Conservatory. After his tour of Australia and New Zealand he will appear in Edinburgh with the Leningrad Symphony. Mrs Rostropovich, who was very tired from the long, air trip from Moscow to Auckland, did not accompany her husband th Christchurch yesterday. Their two daughters, Olga, aged four, and Helen, aged two, are being looked after by their grandmother in Moscow.