Mstislav Rostropovich, the legendary Russian cellist and conductor who became an emblem of resistance to Soviet power and joined Boris Yeltsin in facing down a Communist putsch in 1991, has died at the age of 80.

Rostropovich had been ill for some time and receiving treatment at a Moscow cancer centre. “He died in hospital today,” said his spokeswoman, Natalya Dolezhal.

Rostropovich was born in Baku and studied in Moscow under the celebrated composers Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. He went on to a glittering international career, although much of it was spent abroad after he was persecuted, then expelled in 1974 by the Soviet authorities.

He was hospitalised in February for a reported operation on a liver tumor and appeared pale and tired during television footage of his 80th birthday celebrations in Moscow.

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In his heyday his playing had an astonishing expressive power - it is no coincidence that he inspired some of the greatest composers of the 20th century to write some of their most masterly music for him

Richard Morrison

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Rostropovich was considered one of the greatest cellists of all time. His exploration of the tonal range of the instrument was unrivalled and he entered productive collaborations with some of the 20th century’s finest composers. In March 2002, to mark his 75th birthday, The Times called him "the world's greatest living musician".

Although sometimes criticised for his lush, romantic style, there was never any doubt about Rostropovich’s expertise on the cello, whether playing classical or contemporary music.

But Rostropovich will be equally remembered for his battle against the Soviet authorities, ending with his exile, and his dramatic return to the democratic new Russia.

Born on March 27, 1927, to a musical family in Baku, capital of then-Soviet Azerbaijan, Rostropovich gave his first concert at the age of 13. By the 1960s he was already on his way to winning over the rest of the world.

Then on October 31, 1970, the cellist wrote an open letter to the newspaper Pravda defending the dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had become the target of official abuse after receiving the Nobel Prize for literature.

Decades later, the cellist would declare:“The best thing I produced was not music, but that letter to Pravda. Since then I have had a clean conscience."

But the letter, which was never published in the state-controlled press, made Rostropovich a marked man.

He was banned from the prestigious Bolshoi Theatre, barred from touring abroad and forbidden to conduct full orchestras. In 1974 he fled the Soviet Union with his wife and two daughters to settle in the United States.

From there, the musician began a campaign to win freedom for another larger-than-life Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, who was confined to internal exile.

In 1978, Rostropovich was stripped of his Soviet citizenship for “systematic acts bringing harm to the prestige of the Soviet Union".

In August 1991, just months from the collapse of Soviet power, he flew to Moscow to help oppose a coup by Communist hardliners, joining Yeltsin - the Russian president with whom he later became close friends - and other pro-democracy campaigners - and famously picking up a rifle outside the Moscow White House, or parliament.

His death came just five days after Yeltsin's.

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