Rostropovich Moves From Hospital to Sanatorium
By Matthew Westphal
March 7, 2007

The cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich has been released from a Moscow hospital and is now in a suburban sanatorium, where he is setting up a “portable office,” according to Russian news reports.

Natalia Dollezhal, the maestro’s Moscow spokesperson, told the Itar-Tass news agency that the great cellist and conductor is “recovering his strength in a sanatorium in Barvikha [outside the capital] and he feels well.”

She acknowledged for the first time that Rostropovich had surgery while in the hospital: “He underwent a complex operation on the liver, and now [doctors] have prescribed therapeutic exercise and walks in the fresh air.” (Though Dollezhal did not say so explicitly, the agency NEWSru reports that doctors removed a tumor.) The spokesperson also confirmed that the maestro’s wife, retired soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, has taken up residence alongside the maestro

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