Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich wrapped up an emotional visit to his native Azerbaijan after offering his music or even his life to prevent new fighting in the region. The renowned cellist and conductor offered during his five-day stay to play for the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan for as long as it took to settle the long dispute over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Feeble but clearly pleased, Mstislav Rostropovich came to the Kremlin on Tuesday evening for a gala celebration marking the 80th birthday of a man renowned for his music and his human rights work. Rostropovich, who had been hospitalized in February for an undisclosed illness, walked slowly into the celebration on the arms of his wife, Galina Vishnyevsakaya, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich said Tuesday he is returning to the Soviet Union for a concert tour next month with feelings of "enormous emotion" but rejected any notion that he might end 16 years of exile in the West. Rostropovich, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, said he and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, were happy that Soviet authorities had "admitted their mistake" and decided to restore the citizenship stripped from them in 1978.

STEPHEN ALBERT: Symphony "RiverRun"; National Symphony, Mstislav Rostropovich, conducting. "To Wake the Dead" (song cycle), Lucy Shelton, soprano; 20th Century Consort, Christopher Kendall, conducting. Delos D/CD1016. Albert's 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning symphony, inspired by the works of James Joyce, is conservatively tonal, even Romantic. His style is eclectic though clearly the Stravinsky of "Firebird" and "Petrushka" have influenced him. Albert is certainly a master of lush orchestration, if his melodic material is not particularly distinguished.

The billionaire who bought the art collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich said Monday it would be on permanent display in a palace outside St. Petersburg, Russia, that is one of the presidency's main meeting centers.

A Russian billionaire says he bought the art collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich for the state by offering the upper limit of the value established by the auction house. Alisher Usmanov said Friday in an interview on Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio that he paid $72.6 million on the eve of an auction by Sotheby's that was to begin Tuesday in London, forcing the auction house to cancel it. The sale had been announced earlier this week, but not the price.

Soviet-born conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, praising new artistic freedom in his homeland, announced today he will take the National Symphony Orchestra on a concert tour of the Soviet Union next February. Rostropovich will lead the 103-member orchestra in two concerts in Moscow and two in Leningrad, he told a news conference at the Kennedy Center, which is the orchestra's home. It will be his first official visit to the Soviet Union since he was exiled 15 years ago. Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin hinted to reporters that the tour could be the next step in restoring Soviet citizenship, which was stripped from Rostropovich in 1978.