As soon as the fall of the Berlin Wall is announced on November 9, 1989, the famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch went there to improvise a concert. As part of the RTS summer series “When classical music tells the story”, a return to this emblematic moment.
Checkpoint Charlie, the best known border post between East Berlin and Berlin-Ouest, November 11, 1989. It has been less than two days that the Wall which separated the German Democratic Republic (RDA) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) fell, starting the reunification of Germany, the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
>> Read also, our file: The Berlin Wall seen by the TSR
Sitting on a plastic chair at the foot of a still standing wall, covered with graffiti, Mstislav Rostropovitch performs several suites by Jean-Sébastien Bach, surrounded by a small crowd that is both surprised and collected. A way for the famous cellist, then aged 62, to welcome the East Berliner and to pay tribute to all those who died because of this wall.
Filmed by television, an extract from this improvised recital will go around the world and will forever associate the name of the Russian musician at this historic moment with world repercussions. Emblematic images which symbolize the meeting between the east and the West, and which show the power of classical music, a universal language which can both help to heal injuries and open the way to reconciliation.
Jean-Sébastien Bach, the only choice possible
Rostropovitch was in Paris when he learned the fall of the Berlin Wall. He then asked a private jet to take him to the German city.
Later, he will say: “When the taxi dropped us off in front of the old wall, I realized that I needed a chair. I went to knock on the door of a house and someone recognized me. Ten minutes later, there was a little crowd and a television team passed. I played the most happy suites for cello alone in Bach in order to celebrate the event. But I could not forget the life. So I played the ‘Sarabande’ of the second suite of Bach in their memory, and I saw a young man in tears. “
For the Russian cellist and conductor, Jean-Sébastien Bach’s music was more than a simple artistic choice. “For me,” he said, “Bach, it’s God”. And the sequel for cello of the German composer “the only possible choice at that time”.
“This wall was a tear in my heart”
In an interview granted in 1999 to the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, the cellist will evoke a more intimate aspect linked to this event: “This wall was like a tear in my heart.” And if the musician wanted to celebrate this moment, it is also because he was going to allow him a very personal reconciliation.
Virtuoso of Russian nationality, Mstislav Rostropovitch was a man of conviction who campaigned for freedom of expression and democratic values. Figure of resistance to Soviet oppression, he had been forced to exile in the West in 1974, then fallen from his Soviet nationality in 1978. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet block, he will be able to return to his country and regain his nationality in 1990.
“This concert was one of the most beautiful moments of my life,” he said during this interview made for the ten years of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Radio subject: Patrick Chaboudez
Web adaptation: Andréanne Quartier-la-Tente