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The Soviet Union that could not suppress Slava's zestful personality is also responsible for his musical excesses. Soviet teachers have long stressed the old romantic school of Russian music, while ignoring new ideas from Western Europe and the U.S. For Rostropovich, growing up in music was like listening with only one ear—the one that hears passion.
He was born in March 1927 in the Caspian coast city of Baku. His mother Sofia was a pianist, his father Leopold an accomplished but uncelebrated cellist who had studied with Casals in Paris. His older sister Veronica was a fine violinist (and today plays with the Moscow State Philharmonic). "From very young, I heard music in the house," says Slava. He was clearly a prodigy. At age four, he began to play the piano, but when he was eight, he recalls, "my father told me, 'You will play the cello.' "
In 1934 the family moved to Moscow, where the children could better study music. They had no place to live. Penniless, Leopold walked the streets, accosting strangers, asking for help. At length, an Armenian woman took pity on Leopold and invited the family to share her rooms. The flat was tiny. "There was only space to lie down in the beds at night," Slava recalls. "If you have a palace with ten rooms and you give one room to somebody else, it is not such a great thing. But if you have two small rooms for three people and take in four other people, that is incredible. Zinaida Cherchopova keep us for nearly three years and without asking for money. People, simple people! That's why in my heart, all my life I very big grateful to my country."
During World War II, money, food and fuel were scarce. At 13, a year before Leopold would die of a heart attack, Slava began to give concerts out of sheer necessity. He played a child's-size cello and in winter practiced while wearing woolen gloves with the fingertips cut away. At war's end he and his sister entered the Moscow Conservatory. To earn money, he worked in his spare time as a carpenter and framemaker. Between times, he practiced the piano and cello. "I work incredibly hard, sometimes 48 hours not stopping. All my gods became fused into one. I wanted quality from each: sound from Piatigorsky, ideas and personality from Casals, feeling and beauty from Fournier." The hard work paid off. He finished a five-year course in cello in a brisk two years.
It was then that he ran into his first political challenge. In February 1948 Prokofiev and Shostakovich were condemned by the authorities for adhering to "formalist perversions and antidemocratic tendencies, which are alien to the Soviet people and their artistic tastes." (Translation: the Kremlin could not abide music that it did not understand.) Shostakovich, who was then Slava's composition professor, was thrown out of the conservatory. "For two years, not one piece by them was played in my country," says Slava indignantly. "But I did not change my professors like the other students." In defiance, he left the conservatory and later went to live with Prokofiev. "I was not worried. For me it was such a great honor, and Shostakovich and Prokofiev gave me back great friendship."