If you don't already have tickets, you probably won't be part of the opening concert of the Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center's 15th anniversary celebrations featuring Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Fifty-five percent of all tickets where sold out on the first day they became available, according to the cultural center.
This is partly the result of the drawing power of Rostropovich, who at age 75 is one of the grand old men of classical music. Growing up in a musical family, Rostropovich said he began his musical training at age four and claims Dimitri Shostakovich as a mentor and friend. During a press conference Wednesday, Rostropovich, who is making his ninth visit to Taiwan, recalled the many friends he made both in the former Soviet Union and across the world, reeling off names that would feature prominently in any history of Western music, painting, literature and performance art. As one of the greatest artists of the USSR, Rostropovich was able to express an unprecedented degree of dissent from the regime, and was finally forced to leave his homeland in 1974. His music remains one of the links by which liberals in the USSR and the Western world managed to continue a cultural detente in the face of Cold War belligerence.
According to Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬), the concert master of the National Symphony Orchestra, who will be supporting Rostropovich, this is the first step in an effort for the NSO to take on bolder projects. This includes an ambitious project to perform all Beethoven's piano concertos with some of Taiwan's leading pianists, which will get going next week, and also to work on a number of operas, including Puccini's Tosca for the end of the year.
The program for tomorrow's performance will include Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor, for which Rostropovich is a recognized interpreter, along with Rossi's William Tell Overture and Sibelius Symphony No. 4
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