Famed cellist still ailing in Moscow

MOSCOW - Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich is being treated at a Moscow clinic specializing in cancer treatment, two Russian newspapers reported Thursday.

The Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing unidentified hospital officials, reported that his condition "is very worrying for doctors. Only the closest people are now being allowed to the great musician."

Rostropovich, 79, was hospitalized for unspecified reasons last week in Paris, where he maintains a residence, and later returned to Moscow, according to his managers in New York.

Komsomolskaya Pravda and another daily, the Gazeta, reported that Rostropovich was being treated at the Blokhin Institute in Moscow, Russia's leading cancer clinic.

Natalia Dollezhal, a spokeswoman for Rostropovich, declined to comment on the reports. On Tuesday, Dollezhal said he was in satisfactory condition and was getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday on March 27. Rostropovich's manager in New York, Ronald Wilford, told The Associated Press on Tuesday: "It does not look good."

Rostropovich's hospitalization was revealed when the Kremlin said President

Vladimir Putin had visited him in a Moscow hospital on Tuesday, but the Kremlin did not identify the hospital or disclose his condition.

Rostropovich went into exile from the Soviet Union with his family in 1974 after housing dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn for four years, which cost him his Soviet citizenship.

When hardline communists tried to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, Rostropovich rushed to the Russian parliament building to oppose the coup.

Three years after his exile, he became music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. He held that the position until 1994 and retains the title conductor laureate.

Rostropovich had an operation in the fall, but weeks later conducted two concerts in Japan celebrating the centenary of his late former teacher, Dmitri Shostakovich, Wilford said.