Variations on a Rococo Theme

Mstislav Rostropovich, cello

English Chamber Orchestra
Benjamin Britten, conductor

TV Director: Brian Large
Recorded at Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Aldeburgh, Great Britain) on 16 June 1968
© BBC, under licence to International Classical Artists Ltd – 2012

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About this video

This extract from the Variations on a Rococo Theme shows two giants of 20th-century music, Benjamin Britten and Mstislav Rostropovich, meeting in Aldeburgh in June 1968. This recording offers an overview of the most exciting years in the career of Mstislav Rostropovich, during which he made his name in the West, was banished from his country for supporting various dissident artists and asserted himself as an ambassador of good, not just in the musical world. Having just been awarded UNESCO's Mozart Gold Medal in 2007, he disappeared and became a cultural legend...

About this work

Variations on a Rococo theme, Op. 33

Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo theme are a work for cello and orchestra. The score was dedicated to the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, who premiered it in Moscow in November 1877, with the conductor Nikolai Rubinstein. The critics were very enthusiastic and Tchaikovsky once said the score…

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