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  You are invited to the Smetana's Days Festival, concert "Duo Brikcius - 2 Cellos Tour" of two Czech cellists (and siblings) Anna Brikciusová and František Brikcius. Concert will be on Sunday 20th February 2011, 11am, at the Měšťanská beseda (Kopeckého sady 13, Plzeň, Czech Republic).

  In addition to Fantasie IV (2008) by the Czech composer and organist Irena Kosíková, Duo Brikcius will play Duo for Violin and Cello (1939-40) by Terezín composer Gideon Klein, as arranged for two cellos. Concert will feature music by L. Boccherini, W. A. Mozart, G. Rossini, P. Hindemith, G. Klein and I. Kosíková as well.

  Large space of 31st biggest Pilsner music event Smetana's Days Festival is this year dedicated to the cello. Festival will host siblings cello Duo Brikcius (featuring unknown compositions of known composers), Finish rock cello band Apocalyptica (introducing newest seventh album 7th Symphony) and others.

  In the cooperation with the Smetana's Days Festival and Dominik Centrum. Ticket sales and reservations on websites http://www.PlzenskaVstupenka.cz . More info is available on websites http://www.Brikcius.com , http://www.SmetanovskeDny.cz , http://www.WebMagazin.cz and http://www.iKosik.com .

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  Et Netera is media partner of projects "MAKANNA" and "eSACHERe".

  Russian (naturalized Swiss) cellist, conductor and pianist Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was born on 27 March 1927, in Baku in Azerbaijan USSR, to ethnic Russian parents, who moved there from Orenburg. At age of four he learned the piano with his mother, Sofiya Nikolaevna Fedotova, a talented pianist. He started the cello at the age of 10 with his father, who was also a renowned cellist and former student of Pablo Casals. During World War II his family moved back to Orenburg and then in 1943 to Moscow.

  In 1943 he entered the Moscow Conservatory where he studied the cello, piano, conducting and composition, until 1948. Among his teachers were Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. In protest to the 10 February 1948 decree, on "formalist" composers (his teacher Dmitri Shostakovich was dismissed from his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow), Rostropovich quit the Conservatory.

  In 1945 he won the gold medal in the first ever Soviet Union competition for young musicians. He won first prize at the international Music Awards of Prague in 1950. In 1950 he was awarded, what was then considered the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, the Stalin Prize. He is teaching at the Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg) Conservatory and the Moscow Conservatory. In 1952 he meets in Prague legendary conductor Václav Talich.

  In 1955, he married Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano at the Bolshoi Theatre. They had two daughters Olga and Jelena. He became professor of cello at the Moscow Conservatory in 1956 and at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1961. Rostropovich went on several tours in Western Europe and met several composers, including Benjamin Britten (1960).

  In 1970 Rostropovich wrote open letter to Soviet press in support of the proscribed novelist and Nobel prizewinner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and in protest at new Soviet restrictions on cultural freedom. His friendship with Solzhenitsyn and his support for dissidents led to official disgrace. Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya were denied exit from USSR and banned from TV and radio. He was sent on a recital tour of small towns in Siberia.


  In 1974 he was allowed to leave USSR with his family for a two years stay in Britain. Hi did not return and settled in the United States, where he later become American citizen. In 1978 they were deprived of Soviet citizenship for "acts harmful to the prestige of the USSR". His Russian citizenship restored in 1990 following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

  From 1977 until 1994, he was musical director and conductor of the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, while still performing with some of the most famous musicians such as Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz. He was also the director and founder of the Rostropovich Music Festival and was a regular performer at the Aldeburgh Festival in the UK.

  In a gesture of political thanksgiving he played Bach on site at the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and in 1991 flew to Moscow to show support for Boris Yeltsin, then besieged in the Russian government building.

  He and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, started the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation to stimulate social projects and activities. They funded a vaccination program in Azerbaijan. In 2002 Rostropovich Home Museum is opened in Baku. In 2006, he was featured in Alexander Sokurov's documentary Elegy of a life: Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya.

  Rostropovich either commissioned or was the recipient of compositions by many composers including Conrad Beck, Luciano Berio, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Bliss, Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Lopes Graça, Sofia Gubaidulina, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber, Aram Khachaturian, Witold Lutosławski, Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Astor Piazzolla, Sergei Prokofiev, Alfred Schnittke and Dmitri Shostakovich.


  Rostropovich received many international awards and honorary doctorates from many international universities. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1970), Annual Award of the International League of Human Rights (1974), honorary degree of MusD from Cambridge University (1975), the Sonning Award (1981), the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance (1984), Honor Award of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Honorary KBE from Queen Elizabeth II (1987), the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan (1987), Citizen of Honor of Orenburg (1993), Polar Music Prize (1995), Prince of Asturias Awards (1997), honorary doctorate from Charles University (1998), Citizen of honor of Vilnius (2000), Order of Service to the Fatherland, First Degree, for his "outstanding contribution to the development of world music and many years of creative activity," presented by President Vladimir Putin (2007), Medal for Art and Science presented by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, the French Legion of Honor. He was an activist, fighting for human rights and freedom of expression in art and politics. As the ambassador for the UNESCO, he supported many educational and cultural projects.

  He maintained residences in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, Paris, Lausanne and Jordanville, New York. He performed on various instruments including the Duport Stradivarius of 1711, a Storioni and a Peter Guarneri of Venice. Mstislav Rostropovich died on April 27, 2007 in Moscow.

  On the occasion of Sacher's 70th birthday of Swiss composer and maecenas Paul Sacher (1906 - 1999), Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich asked 12 composers and mutual friends (Conrad Beck, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber and Witold Lutoslawski) to write composition for cello solo with use of notes creating his name (eS, A, C, H, E, Re). Compositions were partially presented by him in Zurich on 2nd May 1976. Whole "eSACHERe" project will be (for the first time in complete performance) performed by Czech Cellist František Brikcius in 2011 in Prague.

  For more about Mstislav Rostropovich visit http://www.Brikcius.com and http://En.Wikipedia.org/Wiki/Mstislav_Rostropovich .

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