Diana Ross holds the microphone for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich as Elton John and Sting gather on stage in New York's Carnegie Hall for the Rainforest Foundation's Benefit Gala in April 1996. Rostropovich died at age 80 in Russia.

Moscow ? Mstislav Rostropovich played the cello with grace and verve – and lived his life offstage the same way. His death at age 80 takes away one of modern Russia’s most compelling figures, admired both for his musical mastery and his defiance of Soviet repression.

Rostropovich stirred souls with playing that was intense and seemingly effortless. He fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall.

In his last public appearance, on March 27 at his birthday celebration in the Kremlin, Rostropovich was frail but still able to show his capacity for joy and generosity.

“I feel myself the happiest man in the world,” he said. “I will be even more happy if this evening will be pleasant for you.”

Spokeswoman Natalia Dollezhal confirmed Rostropovich’s death, but would not immediately give details. The composer, who returned to Russia last month after years of living in Paris, had suffered from intestinal cancer.

After a funeral Sunday in Christ the Savior Cathedral, he is to be buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, where the graves of his teachers Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev also lie. The arrangements echo the prestigious farewell this week that Russia accorded Boris Yeltsin, the first leader of post-Soviet Russia.

President Vladimir Putin called Rostropovich’s death “a huge loss for Russian culture” and expressed condolences to his loved ones.

Rostropovich, who was known by his friends as “Slava,” was considered by many to be the successor to Pablo Casals as the world’s greatest cellist.

A bear of a man who hugged practically anyone in sight, he was an effusive rather than an intimidating maestro, a teacher who nurtured Jacqueline du Pre among many other great cellists.

“He was the most inspiring musician that I have ever known,” said David Finckel, the Emerson String Quartet’s cellist who studied with Rostropovich for nine years. “He had a way to channel his energy through other people, and it was magical.”

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma released a statement expressing deep sadness at the loss of his fellow musician.

“Cellists, myself included, are enormously grateful to Slava for the way he transformed the cello repertoire, developing new techniques through compositions he commissioned,” Ma said. “He made things that were once thought impossible on the cello possible.”

Rostropovich’s sympathies against the Communist Party leaders of his homeland started with the Stalin-era denunciations of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

Under Leonid Brezhnev’s regime in the early 1970s, Rostropovich and his wife, the Bolshoi Opera soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, sheltered the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their country house.

The fight by the cellist and his wife for cultural freedom resulted in the cancellation of concerts, foreign tours and recording projects. Finally, in 1974, they fled to Paris with their two daughters. Four years later, their Soviet citizenship was revoked.

But in 1989, as the Berlin Wall was being torn down, Rostropovich showed up with his cello and played Bach cello suites amid the rubble. The next year, his Soviet citizenship was restored.