SHORT TAKES : Rostropovich Plans Soviet Tour

WASHINGTON — Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich said Tuesday he is returning to the Soviet Union for a concert tour next month with feelings of “enormous emotion” but rejected any notion that he might end 16 years of exile in the West. Rostropovich, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, said he and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, were happy that Soviet authorities had “admitted their mistake” and decided to restore the citizenship stripped from them in 1978.

But Rostropovich made clear during a session with reporters at the Kennedy Center that the couple has no intention of abandoning their life in the West and returning permanently to their homeland. Rostropovich repeated his assertion last week that “the almost 16 years spent in the West since our exile do not yet allow us to change our lives again.”