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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
Mstislav Rostropovich
MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH
Awarded by
President Ronald Reagan
June 23, 1987
He once jokingly asked his mother why she had carried him longer than the usual 9 months. "Slava," she answered, "to give you such beautiful hands." Performing, teaching, and conducting, the beautiful hands of Mstislav Rostropovich have shared with millions his passion for music, especially the music of the homeland he has never ceased to love. He is a virtuoso not only of music but of heart and mind, as well.
Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbaijan to a Jewish family and was taken by his family to Russia at an early age to study music.
At the age of sixteen he entered the Moscow Conservatory where he studied composition with Prokofiev and Shostakovich. In 1945 he came to prominence overnight as a cellist when he won the gold medal in the first ever Soviet Union competition for young musicians. Thereafter, despite his continued battle with the communist authorities, he became one of the central figures of the music life there, for twenty-five years inspiring Soviet cellists, composers and audiences alike.
He left the Soviet Union with his family in 1974 when they were finally granted exit visas. This effectively allowed them to go into exile. Four years later they were stripped of their Soviet citizenship, a decree which held until 1990.
Mstislav Rostropovich is recognized internationally as a consummate musician and an outspoken defender of human rights. Widely considered to be the world's greatest cellist, he has recorded virtually the entire repertoire and has inspired many of this era's finest composers to create works especially for him. He was Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra for 17 seasons and enjoys special relationships as conductor with such widely varied orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo, Japan, and the Vienna Philharmonic. As pianist, Maestro Rostropovich has often accompanied his wife, the acclaimed soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, in recital, and together they have toured the globe.
Rostropovich holds over 40 honorary degrees and 25 different nations have lavished more than 90 major awards upon him, including Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Commander of the Legion of Honor of France, membership in the Academy of Arts of the French Institute, often called the "Forty Immortals," the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale, and, from the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Kennedy Center Honors of 1992. Prior to leaving the USSR on an exit visa, he had received the Stalin Prize, had been named a People's Artist of the USSR and was a recipient of the Lenin Prize, the nation's highest honor. His tireless work as a defender of human rights includes his courageous defense of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and his trip to Moscow in August 1991 - unheralded, visa-less, at great risk to his life and freedom - to join those in the Russian White House resisting the attempted coup. For his support of the democratic forces during the aborted coup he was recently presented with the State Prize of Russia. He has received numerous awards for his efforts on behalf of human rights, among them the 1974 Annual Award of the International League of Human Rights.
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Medal History
