In August 1991, with tanks rolling through Moscow, world-famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich bought a plane ticket to Japan with a deliberate layover in the Soviet capital, talked his way past airport security without a visa, and joined Boris Yeltsin in the streets to oppose the military coup. This episode traces how a musical prodigy born in Baku in 1927 became one of the greatest cellists in history and a global symbol of human rights, from his studies at the Moscow Conservatory under Shostakovich to winning the Stalin Prize at 23.

We follow the pattern of loyalty that made him dangerous to the state: quitting the conservatory at 21 when Shostakovich was purged, smuggling the manuscript of the 13th Symphony to the West, holding up the score of Dvorak's cello concerto at the London Proms on the day Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring,  ...