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Glossary & annotations
(for readers across the world)
Stradivarius -- Product of 17th/18th-century Italian family Stradivari, famous as makers of the world's finest violins, violas and cellos. A Stradivarius among string instruments is like a Rolls Royce among cars.
Kamani auditorium -- Spacious (600+), modern concert hall in New Delhi.
Lalgudi Jayaraman -- One of the greatest violinists in Carnatic music.
Ravi Shankar -- Internationally known sitarist (the sitar is one of the twin prime string instruments in Hindustani music, the other one being the sarod).
Carnatic/Hindustani music -- Classical music of South/North India.
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THE HINDU,
New Delhi
23 December 1988
Soul-stirring cello music
"The cello is my voice. It is an extension of my vocal chord. Through the cello I sing. What is in my heart, what is in my head, it comes through my hand, through my fingers, and finds expression in the cello's strings."
So spoke Mstislav Rostropovitch, the legendary Russian musician who now lives in Washington and divides his time equally between his activities as Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra and a globe-trotting cello virtuoso. He was addressing a press conference organized by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the United States Information Service and the Delhi Music Society in Azad Bhavan last Monday afternoon.
The statement soon became a memorable one because it was followed that evening by a soul-stirring demonstration of the musician's total integration with his instrument, in the fully-packed Kamani auditorium.
Two
sonatas for cello and piano, by Brahms and Shostokovitch, with the
young London-based Indian Pali Pavri playing the piano, were rendered
beautifully. But it was in the Bach Suite No. 3 for unaccompanied cello that
the maestro's magic powers were in full display. Deeply absorbed in a
spiritual communion with his richly-toned 18th-century Stradivarius,
Rostropovitch literally played on the heart-strings of the spellbound
Indian-international audience.
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PostScript, 2016
Not unique, but universal phenomenon
It
gives me great pleasure to revive my impressions of the magic touch of
Rostropovitch with the following and related recordings on YouTube
However,
taking a fresh look now at this old context and my own review, I wonder
whether I would have highlighted the Russian cellomaster's 'spiritual
communion with his Stradivarius' -- as if it was a unique phenomenon
-- if I hadn't heard him declare passionately that "The cello is
my voice . . . etc." in the press conference held a few hours before his performance.
Looking at
that quotation now, I can see quite clearly that more or less the same
thing could have been truthfully said by any legendary instrumentalist anywhere in the world -- like, let us say, Yehudi Menuhin or Lalgudi Jayaraman about their violins, Ravi Shankar or Segovia about
their sitar or guitar : or even by von Karajan or Zubin Mehta, if
you visualize a whole orchestra as the conductor's instrument!
The
mystic rapport which invariably exists between a true grandmaster of instrumental music and his beloved instrument is a universal
phenomenon which needs to be viewed in a far wider perspective than that
of a concert review, or even a career assessment. We never
think of it or even notice it while we are actually being moved by a
great performance, unless our attention is drawn to it in a specific
manner, as happened on this unusual occasion.
