Cellist-Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich Dies at 80

As a conductor and cello soloist he did up to 140 concerts a year, and his annual income was well into seven figures. He traveled about the United States and around the World. He had an apartment at the Watergate in Washington, a luxury apartment in Paris and he built a country house for Galina Vishnevskaya near a Russian Orthodox monastery in Upstate New York.

In the nation's capital, he became a leading celebrity, known universally by his nickname, "Slava." His heavily accented but nevertheless eloquent English; his appetites for music, food and vodka, which he kept in a freezer; his bear hugs; and his flair for the dramatic gesture endeared him to the public.

He demanded much of his orchestra. In return, he offered loyalty and friendship, not only to his musicians but to the support staff.

In 1982 a stagehand named Bull McNeil, who traveled with the orchestra, died. At the Alexandria funeral parlor where the wake was being held, Rostropovich showed up unannounced with his cello shortly before closing time. He walked over to the open coffin, said a short prayer, played some music on the cello and then left, in silence.

As he rebuilt a life in the West, his standing in the Soviet Union sank. In 1978 the Soviet government, denouncing Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, as "ideological degenerates," revoked their citizenship and barred them from returning to their homeland.

The action against Rostropovich, by the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, coincided with a period of rigid Kremlin orthodoxy. An extraordinary number of the country's leading virtuosos in the fields of dance and music fled the country and sought artistic fulfillment in the West, feeling their freedom of expression had been sharply curtailed in the Soviet Union. The defectors included such top names in Soviet ballet as Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova.

During his years of exile, Rostropovich had often described himself as "an ambassador of the Russian people -- not their rotten government -- and Russian music."

Over time, change came to the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev became premiere, bringing a political philosophy he called "glasnost"--openness in English -- to the Soviet government. The heavy hand of artistic orthodoxy was lightened. Censorship was curtailed. The Moscow to which Rostropovich returned with the National Symphony in 1990 was a vastly different place from he one he'd left 16 years earlier.

He began that return with a visit to Novodevichy Cemetery, where he laid flowers on the grave of his former mentor, Shostakovich. On his second day back in Moscow, Rostropovich visited another cemetery and the grave of dissident Andrei Sakarov, whom he called "the greatest man of the 20th century."

He would return to his homeland again, in 1991, to stand with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin against the plotters in an abortive August coup d'etat. For this he received a new award, the State Prize of Russia.

Yeltsin, Rostropovich's long-term friend and admirer, died on Monday.

Rostropovich was 66 when he retired from the National Symphony, old enough to start slowing down, but not ready for full retirement. He divided his time between France, the United States and Russia, leading orchestras around the world as a guest conductor and continuing to give concerts as a solo cellist.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.