Mstislav Rostropovich

1927-2007. May he rest in peace.

Tall, heavyset and bald but for a halo of white hair, Mr. Rostropovich was a commanding presence both on and off the stage. But he was also gregarious in an extroverted, Russian way: at the end of an orchestral performance, he often hopped off the podium and kissed and hugged every musician within reach.

He also had a sense of humor that often cut through the sobriety of the concert atmosphere. He sometimes surprised his accompanists by pasting centerfolds from adult magazines into the scores from which they would be performing. At a concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the National Symphony, he dressed as Haydn, in a wig and livery, to conduct the “Toy” Symphony. And at the San Francisco Symphony’s 70th birthday tribute to Isaac Stern, he played “The Swan” movement from Saint-Sam0ens’s “Carnival of the Animals” attired in white tights, a ballet tutu, a swan-like headdress and red lipstick.

Mr. Rostropovich, who was widely known by his diminutive, Slava (which means glory in Russian), was also an accomplished pianist. He was often the accompanist at recitals by his wife, the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, whom he married in 1955, and who survives him, as do two daughters, Olga and Elena.

But Mr. Rostropovich became famous well beyond musical circles, as a symbol of artistic conscience and his defiance of the Soviet regime. When the writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn came increasingly under attack by Soviet authorities in the late 1960’s, Mr. Rostropovich and Miss Vishnevskaya allowed him to stay in their dacha at Zhukovka, outside Moscow. He was their guest for four years, and Mr. Rostropovich tried to intercede on his behalf, personally taking the manuscript of “August 1914” to the Ministry of Culture and arguing that there was nothing threatening to the Soviet system in it. His efforts were rebuffed.

His own troubles began in 1970 when, out of frustration with the suppression of Mr. Solzhenitsyn and other writers, artists and musicians, he sent an open letter to Pravda, which did not publish it, and Western newspapers, which did.

“Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word,” he asked in the letter. “Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.”