In Thomas Bernhard's shattering novel The Loser, the protagonist studies piano with Vladimir Horowitz. Which is totally cool -- the only problem is that one of the other students is a strange-looking Canadian who's really really good. His name is Glenn Gould.
Which, of course, suXXors a l0t if you're studying with him under another genius.
It's kind of what must have happened to the people who studied under Rostropovich, and one of the other students was an English girl with a French name -- Jacqueline du Pré.
Many things come to your mind when you have to absorb the news of the passing of an essential artist such as Rostropovich -- a major (if not unexpected, given the maestro's age and recent illnesses) catastrophic event, of a magnitude that, in recent years, is only paralleled by the tragic death -- and at such a young age! -- of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and the passing of our dearest Maestro Carlo Maria Giulini.
Many things come to your mind because you're there, in the kitchen, preparing lunch (it sounds more complicated than it is -- slicing sashimi-grade tuna with a samurai-sword-like monstrous shiny Japanese blade is not exactly cooking, but still), with the TV on with the sound turned off because you'd much rather listen to La Ceci (aka Cecilia Bartoli for those of you who don't go shoe-shopping with her like Opera Chic does -- j/k j/k we can only hope) sing Gluck. But the TV's on and you see Maestro Rostropovich appear on the screen of the lunchtime news, and you know he's been very sick, and you don't even need to turn the audio on to know what happened.
You check out your CD collection quickly -- Dvorak, Beethoven's Sonata 5, there are so many, and you take down the Bach Sonata n. 2 in D Minor, because it just seems appropriate, and you don't need YouTube to imagine him leaning on his cello, eyes shut tight, drifting into ecstasy.
But it's also nice to imagine him walking briskly in the city of Paris, almost 50 year old and drunken with newly found freedom; playing Berlin in 1989; pacing the corridors of the Russian Parliament in 1991, already in his sixties, to defend the newly born Russian democracy against the military coup. Or simply, already in his old age, playing for the victims of the tsunami. Campaigning for making vaccines cheaper for children worldwide. Conducting with a twinkle in his eye, smiling serenely toward the strings with an expression that said don't make me come down there and show you how it's done, kid, don't make me.
We hear he kissed people a lot, Russian-style, especially perfect strangers.
We wish we'd met him, so much.
The Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation said the funeral will be held on Sunday in Moscow, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Rostropovich will be buried, as he should, in Novodevichy Cemetery, next to Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
The very least Russia could do after all for one of her greatest sons.
^^^update^^^
Excellent discography at Tim Page Recommends.