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| Biography of Mstislav Rostropovitch |
Mr Mstislav Rostrpopovitch was born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1927. At the age of four he started piano lessons with his mother and shortly afterwards began to study the cello with his father. He continued under his father's tuition at the Central Music School in Moscow and then went on to the Moscow Conservatoire where in addition to his cello and piano studies he studied composition with Schostakovich
He made his public debut as a cellist in 1940 at the age of 13 and was immediately recognised as a potentially through his recordings, and when he began touring in the West it was soon apparent that in Rostropovich the world had a natural successor to the great Pablo Casals, who had reigned as the supreme cellist for more than half a century
In 1955, Mr Rostropovich married Galina Vishnevskaya, the leading soprano at the Bolshoï Opera in Moscou. The names of Rostropovitch and Vishnevkaya have become linked to represent one of the world's finest and most celebrated partnerships, and Rostropovich is now highly regarded as a piano accompianist
Mstislav Rostropovich has received many international awards and honours including the German Order of Merit, the Gold Medal of the Royal Philarmonic Society, the Lenin Prize, the Annual Awards of the League of human Rights and the Knight Commander of the Most excellent Order of the British Empire. He has been greatly honoured by universities all over the world, receiving honorary doctorates from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Tel Aviv, Dublin, Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews |
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