He is affectionately known as "Slava" - the Russian word for glory. But according to this morning's papers the legendary Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich is today seriously ill, and possibly dying, in a Moscow clinic.
The rumours come a day after Russia's president Vladimir Putin awarded the musician the country's highest honour. On Monday Putin gave 79-year-old Rostropovich the order of merit, first degree. The award was in recognition of what the Kremlin said was his "outstanding contribution" to the world of music, and for his many years of "creative work". Earlier this month Putin even dropped in to see the ailing cellist at his hospital bedside - not something he does with everyone.
Rostropovich hasn't always enjoyed such cosy and congenial relations with the Russian state. He was famously forced to leave the Soviet Union after the Brezhnev administration took exception to his friendship with the then-banned novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He left in 1974 - settling in the US, and later France.
Latterly, however, Rostropovich - one of the 20th century's greatest cellists - has acquired heroic status in Russia. When communist hardliners attempted to seize Russia's White House in 1991, Rostropovich defended it together with Boris Yeltsin, Russia's newly elected president, who stood on a tank. The two became close chums.
He has been on good terms with Putin, too. The only people who don't appear to like Rostropovich much these days are Russia's fearsome critics. The cellist - famous for his interpretation of Dvorak's B minor cello concerto and for Hadyn's cello concertos in C and D - was incensed by a wave of hostile reviews a few years ago and vowed never to play in Russia again.
This morning, aides denied a report in the mass-selling Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper that the cellist and conductor was suffering from incurable liver cancer. "There has been some improvement," Tatiana Zagrekova, of the Rostropovich Fund, said optimistically, when I asked this morning for the latest on his health.
Assuming Rostropovich recovers, a huge birthday party at the Moscow conservatory is planned for him on March 27 - his 80th. Let's hope Slava makes it.
