String section: Slava at seventy-five.(The Talk of the Town)(cellist Mstislav Rostropovich)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 22-APR-02

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The voice of the man who answered a phone call from the lobby of a midtown hotel last week was unmistakably that of Mstislav Rostropovich. "Helllloooo!" it roared. "Yes, you are early, but come up, please, now. Floor feeefty-two!" The Maestro had just arrived to play the Dvorak Cello Concerto and the American premiere of a concerto by the young French composer Eric Tanguy with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall. He opened the door to his suite and delivered another hello that might have come from an entire double-bass section. Dressed in a chocolate-brown three-piece suit with red-and-silver pinstripes, he looked remarkably hale for a man who had just turned seventy-five. "Soooo,"...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.