Quote from ‘ Music and our Life’
by Mstislaw and Galina Rostropowitsch recorded by Claude Samuel (1985)

“Personally, I regard the immense repertoire for the duo cello – piano as extremely artificial. The cello produces reverberating tones while the tone of the piano is a “hammering” one, which means that it levels off immediately after the striking of the chord with the hammer. In short, these two instruments have totally different sounds and it is almost unnatural to couple them together. But, I am afraid the cello and piano will be linked forever, since it has become a habit of composers to contrast the single voice of the cello with the many voices of the piano.
In Russia I was on tour with an accordionist and I am honestly convinced that the sound of the accordion can be tuned to the cello much better than that of the piano. Here, many great achievements could be made and numerous experiments could be carried out in order to explore all the possibilities of the cello.”
Mstislaw Rostropowitsch