Mstislav Rostropovich, an overwhelming life force in the form of a cellist, died today in Moscow. Tim Page, in a fine appreciation in the Washington Post, quotes something that Rostropovich said to him in a 1982 interview: "There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about — irony, joy, human suffering, love." And here's a vivacious chat that Charles Michener had with Rostropovich for The New Yorker in 2002: "When I am thirty-five years old, I feel life is so long—so lonnng! After that, so short!”
