"When I finally got together with Rostropovich as a student, he was very focused, almost entirely focused on the music itself, on what the composer had in mind and what he knew about the composer. Many of the works that I played for him had in fact been composed and written for him; he was often the first performer of these works, having known the composers personally."

You may also like:

• 

  Dmitri Shostakovich
  Composer

• 

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  Essayist

• 

  Sergei Prokofiev
  Ballet composer

• 

  Sergei Rachmaninoff
  Composer