April 28, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1428

MOSCOW: Mstislav Rostropovich, the legendary Russian cellist who became a powerful emblem of resistance to the Soviet communist system, died on Friday in a Moscow hospital. He was 80.

Russian President Vladimir Putin led the tributes to Rostropovich, describing his death as “a terrible loss” and offering his condolences to the family in comments broadcast on state television.

“I know how bravely he fought until the last minute against the most difficult ailment. Today we have lost a dear and close person, and Russia, the whole world, has lost a great musician and humanist,” Putin said.

Dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn also honoured the memory of Rostropovich, who came to his aid against persecution by Soviet authorities after the author received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970.

“The departure of Mstislav Rostropovich is a bitter blow for our culture,” Solzhenitsyn, the author of celebrated works about the Soviet prison camp system, said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies. “Goodbye dear friend!” Solzhenitsyn said.

In one of the brave acts of defiance that helped define his career, Rostropovich flew to Moscow to support Yeltsin in August 1991 in resisting a Soviet military coup, just months before the final Soviet collapse.

During the coup attempt, Rostropovich played an impromptu night-time concert for throngs of anti-Soviet demonstrators on Dzerzhinsky square in front of the KGB headquarters in central Moscow.

He was considered one of the greatest cellists of all time. His exploration of the tonal range of the instrument was unrivalled and he entered productive collaborations with some of the 20th century's finest composers.—AFP