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Left: An audience of students and teachers looks on as Rostropovich provides instruction during his Master's Class at the Music Academy. A celebrated cellist, he is also famous for accompanying his wife, opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya, on piano. Photo: Khalid Asgarov, REUTERS. Right: President Aliyev presents Rostropovich with Azerbaijan's highest honor, the Order of Independence. Photo: Rafig Baguirov. The Vaccine Fund, established by an initial $750 million donation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Microsoft] but now gaining support from governments and other donors, provides new and underused vaccines and immunization services to 74 low-income countries. Three million people, most of them children, die annually from diseases that can be prevented with simple, inexpensive vaccines. (To learn more about The Vaccine Fund, visit www.vaccinefund.org.)   Master ClassesIt was an emotional homecoming for the Maestro, who conducted a gala concert of the Baku Symphony. "It fills me with joy to be able to bring the gift of health to the children of Azerbaijan, and the gift of music to the entire nation," said Maestro Rostropovich. Left: Rostropovich examines a musical score during the student concert as Music Academy Rector Farhad Badalbeyli looks on. Photo: Elman Gurbanov. "President Heydar Aliyev and the people of Azerbaijan do me great honor. This is a wonderful way to celebrate my birthday." The Maestro, who now lives in Paris, was born in Baku. At the age of four, his parents moved to Russia, where he continued his music education. At 16, he entered the Moscow Conservatory and studied composition under Prokofiev and Shostakovich. At 18, in 1945, he won the gold medal of the First Soviet Competition for Young Musicians. He went on to earn both the Lenin and Stalin Prizes, which were the Soviet Union's highest honors. In 1956, he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in the U.S. and began his conducting career in the Soviet Union in 1961. He and his wife, the famous Bolshoi soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, ran into trouble with Soviet authorities for his associations with dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for housing him in their dacha and for writing an internationally publicized letter attacking the Soviet regime. In retaliation, the government curtailed their concerts.  Left: Minister of Health Ali Insanov, Rostropovich,
President Aliyev, Galina Vishnevskaya (Rostropovich's wife) and
translator Tahir Karimov look on as a newborn is vaccinated.
Rostropovich brought a $1.1 million grant to provide vaccines
for infants. Photo: Khalid Asgarov, REUTERS.In 1976, Rostropovich defected to the United States and the following year, was appointed Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., a position he held for 17 seasons until 1990, when he returned to the USSR during Gorbachev's Perestroika. Rostropovich returned to celebrate his 70th birthday in Baku and Moscow in 1997. After realizing the enormous musical talent that exists in Azerbaijan, he promised to return annually to give Master Classes. Again this year he has organized these sessions in which some of the best students from the major music schools from elementary to the conservatory are selected to perform for him in the Bolshoi Hall in the Academy of Music in the presence of about 250 students, parents and teachers.
Left: Bill and Melinda Gates initiated The Vaccine Fund with a $750 million donation. Right: The government of Japan and the Yamaha Foundation provided new instruments to the Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra, which were presented by Rostropovich on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Photo: Khalid Asgarov, REUTERS.  Rostropovich is recognized internationally
as a consummate musician and an outspoken defender of human rights.
Widely considered to be the world's greatest cellist, he enjoys
special relationships as conductor with such widely varied orchestras
as the London Symphony Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic
in Tokyo and the Vienna Philharmonic. As a pianist, Maestro Rostropovich
has often accompanied his wife, who joined him on this trip to
Baku, as she often does. Left: Rostropovich critiques Music Academy student Aleksei Maltikh's cello technique during an annual Master's Class held in Baku March 2002. Photo: Khalid Asgarov, REUTERS. Rostropovich holds more than 40 honorary degrees, and 25 different nations have lavished more than 90 major awards upon him, including Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society of London (1970), Commander of the Legion of Honor of France, membership in the Academy of Arts of the French Institute, often called the "Forty Immortals," the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale, and, from the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Kennedy Center Honors of 1992. To learn more about Mstislav
Rostropovich, see "Mstislav Rostropovich: Cellist and Conductor"
in AI 7.4 (Winter 1999), available on AZER.com,
or visit www.rostropovich.org. Back to Index
AI 10.1 (Spring 2002) |
