MOSCOW — Mstislav Rostropovich played the cello with grace and verve — and lived his life offstage the same way. His death at age 80 takes away one of modern Russia's most compelling figures, admired both for his musical mastery and his defiance of Soviet repression.
Rostropovich stirred souls with playing that was both intense and seemingly effortless. He fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall.
In his last public appearance, at his birthday celebration in the Kremlin on March 27, Rostropovich was frail but still able to show his capacity for joy and generosity.
"I feel myself the happiest man in the world," he said. "I will be even more happy if this evening will be pleasant for you."
Spokeswoman Natalia Dolle-zhal confirmed Rostropovich's death but would not immediately give details. The composer, who returned to Russia last month after years of living in Paris, had suffered from intestinal cancer.
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After a funeral in Christ the Savior Cathedral on Sunday, he is to be buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, where the graves of his teachers Dmitry Shosta-kovich and Sergei Prokofiev also lie. The arrangements echo the prestigious farewell this week that Russia accorded Boris Yeltsin, the first leader of post-Soviet Russia.
President Vladimir Putin called Rostropovich's death "a huge loss for Russian culture" and expressed condolences to his loved ones.
Rostropovich, who was known by his friends as "Slava," was considered by many to be the successor to Pablo Casals as the world's greatest cellist.
A bear of a man who hugged practically anyone in sight, he was an effusive rather than an intimidating maestro, a teacher who nurtured Jacqueline du Pre among many other great cellists.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma released a statement expressing deep sadness at the loss of his fellow musician.
"Cellists, myself included, are enormously grateful to Slava for the way he transformed the cello repertoire, developing new techniques through compositions he commissioned," Ma said. "He made things that were once thought impossible on the cello possible."
Opposition to communism
Rostropovich's sympathies against the Communist Party leaders of his homeland started with the Stalin-era denunciations of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
Under Leonid Brezhnev's regime, Rostropovich and his wife, Bolshoi Opera soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, sheltered the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their country house in the early 1970s.
"The passing of Mstislav Rostropovich is a bitter blow to our culture," Solzhenitsyn said Friday, according to his wife, Natalya.
"He gave Russian culture worldwide fame. Farewell, beloved friend," Solzhenitsyn said.
After Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Rostropovich wrote an open letter protesting the official Soviet vilification of the author.
The fight by the cellist and his wife for cultural freedom resulted in the cancellation of concerts, foreign tours and recording projects. Finally, in 1974, they fled to Paris with their two daughters. Four years later, their Soviet citizenship was revoked.
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was born March 27, 1927, in Baku in then-Soviet Azerbaijan. His mother was a pianist. His grandfather and father, Leopold, were cellists.
He made his public debut as a cellist in 1942 at age 15.
