King can catalog many more examples of Rostropovich’s superior technique, but he notes that the cellist’s master classes were more “a matter of inspiration than practicality.” This opinion is seconded by Rachel Young, now a National Symphony cellist who played two master classes for Rostropovich as a high-school student and who later attended several others.

“I worked on technique with my own teacher,” she says. “In the master classes with Slava, everything was dramatic—always adjectives and descriptions and stories. He’d shake his fist in my face and describe pictures to get my mind off the cello and onto the music.”

Young remembers driving Rostropovich to a cello conference in Maryland, where he presided over a large cello orchestra, its members ranging from children to adults, most of them strangers to one another. “Suddenly we were one big family,” Young says. “All of a sudden we were exuding love for each other because of Slava. He was able to create that atmosphere all by himself. He really made the cello world into a real community.”

Glenn Garlick, another National Symphony cellist, says his first personal interaction with Rostropovich was “when he was hugging me after I’d taken an audition for the orchestra. I had heard that he was a fun guy, but the first time I got up close to him and saw his eyes, I thought, ‘This is a powerful person.’ In those blue eyes, all of a sudden I saw that he was a very piercing intellect—not just what you see on the outside, the ebullience and joy and ‘I love you so much.’

“As I grew to know him, I understood that he was a focused, dynamic person beyond the barrel of fun everybody could see from a distance.”

That fun was hard to miss—Rostropovich leading a Beethoven rehearsal in a blond wig he’d snatched from a bass player, or dressing with Sviatoslav Richter as crocodiles and going to a costume party where they spent so long in character on their bellies that they were too sore to give concerts for a week.

But Rostropovich was no goofball when it came to musical values.

Garlick recalls a moment just before a concert with cellist Wendy Warner, who had just won first prize in the 1990 International Rostropovich Competition in Paris. Rostropovich engaged her to play in a National Symphony subscription concert and then tour with the orchestra. Backstage, Warner confessed that she was a bit nervous, feeling the pressure of her sudden success. According to Garlick, Rostropovich said, “Wendy, when you go on stage, forget about nervousness, forget audience, think only about your love of the music. Then you and audience will walk hand in hand with the composer—and with God.”

Says Garlick, “I think for Slava, that was his approach to everything in music: to find the soul of the composer to the best of his ability, and present that in performance.”

Yet it is not just Rostropovich’s musicianship that has been widely discussed since April. This is something that was anticipated decades ago by Dmitri Shostakovich, who said, “The significance of Mstislav Rostropovich’s work spreads far beyond his playing of the cello: This versatile and ever-inspiring musician is a great and deep man, a profoundly creative artist, whose contribution to cultural life is immeasurably precious.”