Early Years
Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, USSR, to parents who had moved from Orenburg. Rostropovich was of mostly ethnic Russian ancestry; his father, Leopold Vitoldovich Rostropovich, was also partly of Polish noble descent. That part of his family bore the Bogorya coat of arms, which was located at the family palace in Skotniki, Masovian Voivodeship. He grew up in Baku and spent his youth there. During World War II his family moved back to Orenburg and then in 1943 to Moscow.
At the age of four, Rostropovich learned the piano with his mother, Sofiya Nikolaevna Fedotova, who was a concert pianist of Russian-Jewish heritage. He began the cello at the age of 10 with his father, who was a renowned cellist and former student of Pau Casals.
In 1943, at the age of 16, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied cello, piano, conducting and composition. His teachers included Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1945 he came to prominence as a cellist when he won the gold medal in the first ever Soviet Union competition for young musicians. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1948, and became professor of cello there in 1956.
Read more about this topic: Mstislav Rostropovich
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. Youve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethovens Pastoral. A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didnt order any credit cards! We dont spend what we dont have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”
—Sarah Louise Delany (b. 1889)