Russian in Paris

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33433, 15 January 1974, Page 5

Russian in Paris

The Soviet cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, played with two other worldfamous musicians, the pianist, Wilhelm Kempff, and the violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, in a concert in Paris last week to mark the twen-ty-fifth anniversary of the International Music Council. A spokesman for the Salle Pleyel, where the concert was held, said: “We sold every one of the 2400 seats, and had to turn 200 people away.” At the concert, arranged by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, the three played Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio. Last Tuesday night Rostropovich, who had not played in the West since March, 1972, played Bach’s Fifth Suite at a recital in the U.N.E.S.C.O. headquarters, attended by 1000 people. The cellist, who is thought to have had difficulty in arranging foreign concerts because of his friendship with the Nobel Prize winner An(drei Solzhenitsyn, later flew, (to London for a concert appearance there.

I Earlier he had visited the (painter, Marc Chagall, in i Southern France, and had gone with him to the museum in Nice dedicated to Chagall’s works.