LONDON.- Sotheby’s London announced today that it will offer for sale The Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Collection of Russian Art on Wednesday, September 19, 2007. The sale is entirely devoted to fine and decorative Russian Art from the 18th to the 20th centuries that formed the contents of the Paris and London apartments of recently deceased internationally renowned cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya, the famous Russian soprano. These works come to sale following a decision taken by the couple to auction their collection and relocate to Russia. The unprecedented sale of their collection will be held in Sotheby’s London salerooms and is estimated to realise in excess of �3 million.

Commenting on their move to Paris and building their collection of Russian Art, Madame Vishnevskaya, said: “When we were forced to leave Russia in 1974 we had to abandon everything; all of our property was left behind in Russia. We left, quite literally, without a penny to our name. Everything we owned remained there. When we left – Rostropovich with a cello and Kuzya, a Newfoundland dog, and I with two suitcases and two children – we had to build our lives all over again from nothing and when in 1978 we were stripped of Russian citizenship, we bought the flat which we’ve lived in for all these years. The flat which we decided to turn into a Russian house is still there today.”

“We used to buy things from countries all over the world.…I love porcelain. Russian porcelain is somehow special. I can instantly distinguish it from other types – if there are several beautiful objects displayed together I immediately pick out a Russian work, I can see it as though I’ve been familiar with it since childhood…. It is interesting when I look back and remember when and where I bought something, what impressions I had when I first saw it. It warms the soul, recalling what life was like before and makes you think about what will be left after us.”

The decision to sell the collection was a mutual one, taken by Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya together. “We wanted the precious items that we had collected with such love over the years to be obtained during our lifetime by real connoisseurs and people who loved Russian art and Russian antiquity. We hoped that these works of art would be acquired by people who love and appreciate them, people to whom these objects speak.”

Discussing the historic sale of The Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Collection of Russian Art, Jo Vickery, Senior Director and Head of Sotheby’s Russian Department in London, said: “The collection of Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya – two of the 20th-century’s most talented musicians – was very much a part of their lives and reflects their love of Imperial Russia. We are truly honoured to be able to offer it for sale. The auction is the first major single owner collection of fine and decorative Russian Art I have had the privilege to handle, and it comes to auction at a landmark moment in the evolution of the international market for Russian Art.”

Mstislav Rostropovich - The celebrated musician Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007) was one of the greatest cellists and conductors of the 20th century. Born in Azerbaijan, Rostropovich was taught to play the piano at the age of four by his mother and the cello at the age of eight by his father, a former student of Pablo Casals. He debuted in 1942 in the Ukraine playing a Saint-Saens Concerto and entered the Moscow Conservatory the following year when he was 16 studying cello as well as composition. In 1945 he won the Soviet national competition for young musicians. Dmitri Shostakovich – who later became a dear friend of both Mstislav and Galina – and Sergei Prokofiev both taught him. In 1955, he married Galina Vishnevskaya, the renowned soprano at the Bolshoi Theatre. Throughout the 1950s he toured widely outside the Soviet Union, making his American debut at Carnegie Hall in 1956, the same year he won a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory. Rostropovich’s debut as conductor took place at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1968 in Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. The artist’s championship of human rights and opposition to censorship in the arts, made him famous throughout the Western world and in 1974 resulted in his family’s emigration. In 1978 the Soviet government revoked Rostropovich’s citizenship and that of Galina Vishnevskaya. His Russian citizenship was eventually reinstated in 1990. Before Rostropovich passed away in April this year, President Vladimir Putin awarded him with the Order of Service to the Fatherland.

Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya - The eminent soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, was born in 1926 in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) and made her operatic her debut in 1944. In 1952 she won a competition held by the Bolshoi in Moscow whose company she joined the following year. She and her husband Mstislav often performed together, perhaps most memorably when they made a recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

Awarded the Order of Lenin, Vishnevskaya was named the ‘People’s Artist of the USSR’ in 1966. Her operatic career, which took her to the world’s greatest opera houses including La Scala, the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, concluded in 1982. Her most famous recordings include Britten’s War Requiem (with Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; 1963), Puccini’s Tosca (1976) and Prokofiev’s War and Peace (1986). Ms Vishnevskaya published her autobiography Galina: A Russian Story, opened an opera theatre –Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre – in Moscow in 2002, and also starred in a film, Alexandra, by Alexander Sokurov, which was shown at The Cannes Film Festival in 2007.

Maestro Rostropovich and Madame Vishnevskaya worked with many of the great composers of the twentieth century, including Prokofiev and Shostakovich, whose two cello concertos were written for Rostropovich, and Britten: the cello suites and Cello Symphony were written for Rostropovich and the War Requiem was composed for Madame Vishnevskaya. Although she was unable to perform in the premiere, she featured in the first recording of Britten's great work.

The Collection - The Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Collection comprises more than 350 lots of fine and decorative Russian works of art from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The diversity of works in the sale range from paintings, porcelain figures, plates and vases, through to ivory caskets, glass and portrait miniatures which vary in estimate from �150-200 up to �800,000-1,200,000. By focusing their collecting on pre-revolutionary Russian Art, master musicians Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya – who put their collection together over a period of 30 years – were able to recreate Imperial Russia in their residences.