Category: people

Mstislav Rostropovich, who died on Friday aged 80, was laid to rest at the Novodevichye cemetery near the grave of Boris Yeltsin. “Among about 1,000 mourners were his widow, soprano Galina Vishnyevskaya, Yeltsin’s wife, the Queen of Spain and the wife of French President Jacques Chirac.”

“My actual lessons with him, which lasted roughly nine years, were sporadic, but my focus on learning from him was constant ever since I first was captivated by his recordings at the age of 11. One did not have to have a lesson to learn from Rostropovich; one had only to be near him in almost any situation. His life and lifestyle were like great music itself: always just beyond the imaginable. Conversely, his way of thinking about music was like life: he taught mostly by metaphor, always creating real-life scenarios that corresponded exactly to a moment in music that needed improvement.”

“Almost universally considered the world’s greatest cellist, Rostropovich was a man who wore his emotions easily, both onstage and off. He lavished bears hugs and kisses on new friends, was quick to tears and played concertos for the hundredth time as if for the very first — or last. Balding, unpretentious and sober in an ever-present pinstriped suit, he was the last superstar of classical music, a throwback to an era when a man who played Tchaikovsky made a difference in international relations.”

“Even had he never picked up a baton, Rostropovich would still be remembered as one of the great musicians of the 20th century — a noble and impassioned cellist whose stated intention was to combine the qualities he most admired in his famous predecessors: “sound from [Gregor] Piatigorsky, ideas and personality from [Pablo] Casals, feeling and beauty from [Pierre] Fournier.” He was an unabashed Romantic who played with a full, burnished tone, effusive emotionalism and a virtuosic command of the instrument.”

The longtime head of the Motion Picture Association of America was the consumate lobbyist. In a sometimes unreasonable business, Jack Valenti was a giant voice of reason,” Steven Spielberg said in a statement. “He was the greatest ambassador Hollywood has ever known, and I will value his wisdom and friendship for all time.”

“Richard Hamburger is looking forward to a little peace and quiet. He has been putting final touches on his last show as artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, The Taming of the Shrew, for Tuesday’s opening. He’ll take a few months to wrap up other projects. After that, the rest is silence, at least for a while. ‘I’ve been on call 24/7 for 25 years,’ says Mr. Hamburger….”

“Choreographer Michael Smuin, a major force in the San Francisco dance world and one of the region’s most prominent and audacious showmen, died of an apparent heart attack Monday morning after collapsing while teaching a Smuin Ballet company class. … Smuin was co-artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet from 1973 to 1985.”

Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold writes about restaurants fancy and plain for LAWeekly. “There was a recent L.A. Times exposé on 400 restaurants that had received failing grades from health inspectors. ‘I’d been to 110 of them,’ he says. In how many eateries has he dined, just in L.A.? He can only guess: 5,000? 10,000?”

He was longtime general manager of La Scala. “His accomplishments at La Scala were significant. He introduced sponsorship and commercial advertising in the playbill and, although purists howled at the time, he did manage to bring the house to financial stability. He also hired Riccardo Muti as music director and formed the La Scala Orchestra. He was especially proud of having convinced Vladimir Horowitz to perform at La Scala.”

Remarkably, the co-founder of New York City Ballet has never had a biography. “It’s not easy to draw a portrait of someone who never sat still. It’s especially hard when that person’s genius consisted of laying the groundwork for other geniuses. Acclaimed historian and biographer Martin Duberman succeeds in ‘The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein,’ the first biography of the impresario, because he paints Kirstein’s life as the restless man lived it – great aesthetic ambitions alternating with cruises to waterfront dives.