PERSONAL GLIMPSES I
From Reader's Digest
July, 1980
December, 1987

Mstislav Rostropovich, the great cellist and musical director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was asked by Gene Shalit of NBC's "Today" show if it was true he had married his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, only four days after meeting her. "Yes," replied Rostropovich ruefully, "I lost four days."

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Henry Fogel, former director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. tells this story about cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch's attendance at the funeral of a Kennedy Center stagehand:

My wife and I drove Slava to the funeral home, and I brought the cello inside. The bereaved family and some of my staff and stagehands were there. Slava went up to the open casket, kneeled  and put his hand on the deceased's. He asked me to bring a chair and said, "Please give me my cello." Then he played the Saraband from Bach's Second Cello Suite.

Here is the greatest cellist in the world playing, without pay or publicity, for this humble man and his family. The stagehands had tears in their eyes, and one said to me, "I didn't know a cello could speak."