Richard Sennett
A Higher Class
Mstislav Rostropovich: Cellist, Teacher, Legend
By Elizabeth Wilson
Faber & Faber 320pp £25 order from our bookshop
This year marks the eightieth birthday of Mstislav Rostropovich – a musical legend as cellist, conductor and teacher, but also an outsize personality and a courageous human being. Born in Baku in 1927, Rostropovich was the solo cellist of the Moscow Philharmonic and laureate of the Soviet All-Union music competition at the age of twenty, a prodigy blessed with both phenomenal technique and a driving musical intensity. He became, in short order, an international star and a sponsor of new music for the cello, the interpreter par excellence of Shostakovich and Britten.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me